Know Your Customer (KYC) refers to customer identity verification, which is a requirement set by providers that offer sensitive services such as banking, finance, and telecommunications to prevent users from using services for illegal purposes such as money laundering and cheating. Electronic KYC (eKYC) uses new technologies such as face and writing identification, Big Data, and AI to automate the verification process.
According to a press release, verification through KYC is implemented through a very strict process to ensure that the users are real customers with real information. The process takes time because it involves many kinds of procedures and documents. However, the problem now can be solved thanks to the electronic identification service, or eKYC.
Of the products available in the market, the solution of automatically digitising documents with BeeOCR developed by VVN AI proves to be optimal, with millions of users. The solution won second prize at the VietChallenge completion in the US after gaining victory at Viettel Advanced Solutions Track 2019.
According to Nguyen Hoang Tung, CEO of VVN AI, he discovered the opportunity when offering consultancy to a German company. Tung and his co-workers decided to create an eID solution to lead the market and be competitive with foreign rivals. The engineers of VVN AI believe that the system will be useful for nearly all fields, from finance and banking to insurance and public administration. The organisation aims to support the public administration system.
Building solutions and algorithms for eKYC is not a difficult job for VVN AI, which has a lot of experience, the release explained. The biggest challenge is that Vietnam still does not have good original data systems. For instance, the fonts used by ID cards are different. The organisation found three or four kinds of fonts, but Vietnam’s ID cards can be easily counterfeited. In Germany, ID cards have 30 vein layers for security, which makes it easier to build an eKYC system.
The company must scan 3.3 million documents a month, or 10 million scans. VVN AI’s identification tool has the processing speed of 1.2 seconds for one scan, or 16-25 times higher than the solutions of the firms which once provided services to Viettel. To enter data manually, Viettel had to pay VND 2,000 (US$ 0.086) for every ID card. But with VVN AI’s solution, the cost has dropped to VND 500 (US$ 0.022), which saves VND 40 billion (US$ 1.7 million) a year.
VVN AI has signed contracts to provide the eID solution to several large companies, including MobiFone, Vietnam Post, VP Bank, Lien Viet Bank, and the Post and Telecommunication Joint Stock Insurance Corporation.
Recently, the Vietnam Software and IT Services Association (VINASA) formally launched a program to select pioneering Vietnamese IT firms in 2020. Under the program, the top ten companies will be selected in each of the 15 areas, including software outsourcing, financial technology, e-government services, start-up businesses, digital content, AI, and IoT.
Submissions to the program will have to undergo three rounds of judgment, with the jury panel including technology, finance, human resources, and start-up experts, as well as IT journalists. Except for start-up businesses, companies must be in operation for at least three years and have a minimum annual revenue of US$ 1 million to be eligible for the program.
Each enterprise can take part in more than one of the 15 areas. The selected firms will appear in a special book published in Vietnamese, English, and Japanese, which will then be introduced directly to 2,000 domestic agencies and organisations and 1,000 international partners from around the world. The deadline for submission is 25 September and the chosen firms will be announced in November. Vietnam is aiming to have at least 100,000 IT firms by 2030 in order to develop its digital economy.