News
Onfido partners with BitPay to power secure payments in Bitcoin
January 2019 by Marc Jacob
Onfido, the award-winning global identity
verification platform, today announced a partnership with BitPay to accept payment
in Bitcoin. BitPay is also using Onfido’s technology to meet Know Your Customer
(KYC) requirements and onboard new users to its platform swiftly and securely.
Onfido’s machine learning technology powers identity verification for over 1,500
customers worldwide. With just a photo of an identity document and a smartphone
camera, users can confirm their identity and gain access to a host of online
services, helping businesses onboard more customers, more securely.
BitPay is the largest global crypto payments provider. It processes over $1 billion
annually from merchants and B2B customers. BitPay verifies the funds and accepts the
Bitcoin on behalf of the organization; businesses then receive settlement in fiat
currency within one to three business days.
Partnering with BitPay helps Onfido expand into international markets where credit
card payments are impractical. While over 2 billion adults worldwide are un- or
underbanked, half of those own a smartphone. BitPay enables transactions from any
computer or mobile device, meaning Onfido can deliver identity verification services
to a large number of otherwise underserved global users.
As well as opening up access to new users, Bitcoin payments also help increase
payment transparency and reduce the fraud risks associated with credit cards.
Cryptocurrency provides increased transactional transparency and security as every
transaction is verified, recorded and stored on the blockchain. The transaction
itself contains no sensitive information, and as a push transaction, similar to
taking cash out of a wallet, the user sends the exact amount of Bitcoin needed to
pay the bill. This eliminates traditional credit card fraud and identity theft risks
associated with credit cards. As a result, there are no chargebacks, which cost
merchants almost $19 billion in 2017 alone.
In addition to Onfido being able to accept payment in bitcoin, Onfido is also the
KYC provider for BitPay. For BitPay, using Onfido’s identity verification
technology helps them onboard more users, more quickly. With demand for digital
currencies reaching unprecedented levels, crypto payments providers are coming under
increasing scrutiny. Onfido helps BitPay meet with its KYC requirements, keeping
fraud off the platform without compromising BitPay’s ability to scale. Onfido is
quickly becoming the go-to provider for KYC in this space, and is already used by
over 30 of the world’s largest crypto exchanges and wallets.
