Learn about Trolley’s new ID verification tool, why we built it, how to turn it on, and why you’ll want it as part of your onboarding processes in no time.
The internet economy is growing quickly, and platforms of all types are adding new users (vendors, sellers, freelancers, artists… you name it) every day.
Having the tools and processes in place to onboard and pay new users in a seamless way is essential to keeping up with that pace. Your responsibility to Know Your Customer (KYC) also needs to stay on pace, or you can end up in a place where you are either:
- bogged down by manual identity verification processes, or
- missing KYC checks, and opening yourself up to risk.
The team at Trolley doesn’t like “manual” or “risk,” so we’re stepping up with an alternative solution.
Introducing Trolley IDV, our latest tool that uses live, multi-step ID verification technology to validate the identity of your users, letting you better trust new signups and move forward with your growth.
Keep reading to learn more.
What we cover
Why trust tools are essential for modern platforms
Simply put, there’s a lot of money moving around on the internet. In 2023, 17.3 billion dollars of online retail sales transactions occur every day.
More and more, these transactions are happening through marketplaces/platforms where a buyer transacts with a seller of a good or service. This means that sellers from around the world are seeing new opportunities to earn and take part of that pie.
However, not all sellers are equally as entitled to participate. There are regulations in place to combat financial fraud, money laundering, and funding terrorism.
These rules require marketplaces to Know Your Customer (KYC). This requires the platform to learn about a user’s identity, banking info, type of business activities and other identifying info, and compare it to global screening lists before moving funds.
This doesn’t stop bad actors from acting badly, so actions that use a legitimate ID to carry out illegitimate activities—like identity fraud and account takeovers—are becoming more and more common.
Global governments have also taken notice of this trend and are putting laws in place that mandate online platforms take an active role in knowing their customers.
As of writing this article, there are two laws in particular that we’re watching:
- In the USA, the INFORM Consumers Act (INFORM) went into effect on June 27, 2023,
- In the EU, the Digital Services Act (DSA) went into force on November 16, 2022.
INFORM requires online marketplaces to collect bank account information, contact information, and a Tax ID number from high-volume third party sellers. Additionally, online marketplaces must verify the information they get from high-volume third party sellers and certify it as accurate at least once a year.
The DSA asks marketplaces based in the EU to conduct similar credential vetting of third party suppliers plus some additional obligations that include compliance by design and random checks.
Our latest feature: Identity Verification (IDV)
Until now, marketplaces and their teams needed to maintain a tech stack alongside manual processes to collect, verify, validate, screen, and communicate the KYC processes.
To make life as easy as possible, Trolley has taken all of the processes above, and integrated them directly into our existing platform as our IDV tool.
Now in a single product that already consolidates onboarding workflows, payouts, ERP syncing, and EoY tax filing, Trolley now also offers product & compliance teams a robust and secure onboarding process, the tools needed to collect and verify identity documents, and a dashboard to manage fraud risk.
Verifying identity and maintaining audit logs ultimately helps in establishing trust between your platform, your recipients, and your users. Our objective is to let you step back from manual compliance checks with the peace of mind of knowing your platform is fighting fraud on auto-pilot.
Trolley IDV has built in:
- Identity & document verification: Collect and validate IDs versus 11,000 official government ID templates from over 200 countries.
- Live photo validation: Use the power of image recognition to ensure the uploaded ID is from the actual person submitting it.
- Proof of address and age comparisons: Verify details provided during onboarding, such as address and DOB, with the ID document.
- Monitoring dashboards: Manage the KYC and IDV process from a single screen where you are alerted to actions you may need to take.
Get started with Trolley’s IDV tools
Want to add IDV and see how it can work for you and your marketplace’s KYC requirements? As a Trolley user, it’s easy to get started.
First, upgrade your account to add Trust (our growing family of fraud-prevention and IDV tools). At the moment, you can do this directly with our support team. In the next few weeks, we’ll be adding Trust as a self-service upgrade option in the dashboard.
Log into your Trolley Dashboard and navigate to “Settings,” where you will now find a new “Trust” section on the left dashboard. Click into “Trust” and you will see a ID “Verification” block.
Click on “ID Verification and toggle the “Require IDV during recipient onboarding” to ON to enable IDV.
Everyone onboarding after this will run through the IDV process.
You might be asking, what does it look like for recipients?
A streamlined recipient experience
For all recipients signing up after you enable IDV, when they log in to the widget/portal for the first time, they will see a step in the onboarding process that asks them to verify their identity.
Clicking the Verify your identity button will open a pop-up in which they will complete the IDV flow, where they will:
- Take a photo of their ID
- We accept the following valid government issued documents for 184 different countries where Trolley pays out to:
- Passport
- Driver’s License
- Government ID Card
- Residence Permit
- Take a selfie
Identity Verification can be completed on desktop or smartphone mobile device as long as the recipient has access to a camera. When completing the verification on a smartphone the recipient can choose to receive the verification link by scanning a QR code or send the link via SMS.
If the recipient successfully completes the flow and their verification is approved, they will be able to complete their onboarding immediately. If there is a delay in receiving the response or if the verification fails, the recipient’s ID verification status will be set to “under review.”
Review ID verification statuses
Within your Trolley Dashboard you will be able to see the verification statuses of all your users from the Recipients list.
There are 4 different statuses available;
- Verified – Recipient has successfully verified their identity.
- Needs Review – Recipient has completed the verification, however the results need review. Recipient profile will remain incomplete.
- Declined – Recipient has failed to verify their identity. The information submitted does not match their identity. Recipient profile will remain incomplete.
- Pending Verification – Recipient has not submitted their identity verification. Recipient profile will remain incomplete.
- Manually Verified – Recipient has been manually marked as verified.
n.b. All recipients onboarded to Trolley before the time of activating Identity Verification will be marked as Manually Verified by default.
When clicking on a recipient’s name you will find more details under the Identity Verification tab on Recipient Profile Page. Here you will see the status of the verification, the source (whether the verification was completed in Trolley or manually), the status reason and the timestamp for when the verification was completed.
Manually verify (when needed)
When a recipient receives a Needs Review or Failed identity verification status you can review the details of the verification on the recipient profile page.
If you are satisfied with the information provided after reviewing the details, you can choose to manually mark the recipient as “Manually Verified.” To do this, click “Ignore IDV & manually verify recipient.”
You will see a confirmation modal which will then update the recipient’s identity verification status.
Trust in Trolley to manage your recipient onboarding and IDV
The KYC process is important to keep the internet economy safe for everyone involved, and removing the friction that might be stopping you from implementing an ideal IDV process is critical for us. We want you to rely on us to help you build trust in your recipients.
As you evaluate the solutions in the market, make sure to spend time looking at how well the option fits with your existing workflows, your existing tech stack, and how much overhead it adds to your processes. We’re pretty confident that our all-in-one onboarding, payouts, sync, tax, and now, IDV solution will provide you the most seamless experience available today.
If you’d like to learn more about adding Trolley Trust or our IDV tool, see our Trust page. If you have questions about functionality or pricing, please reach out to us.
