Protecting Your Accounting Practice: How to Navigate Identity Verification Without the Risk

Identifying your customers doesn’t need to be unsafe, complicated or time-consuming. Take a peek inside the VerifiMe network for accountants.

VerifiMe began with a vision of a world where financial services customers could safely, securely and easily identify themselves to businesses. Using Web 3.0 technology (blockchain, distributed ledger, tokenisation), VerifiMe enables businesses to meet its AML/CTF obligations without the need to collect customer documents. Our network now provides a solution for accountancy firms and their customers who value flexibility, convenience and ease in identity transactions.

Over the past three years, we have built a two-sided network, seamlessly connecting customers to businesses that are reporting entities required to comply with AML/CTF legislation, who look to our platform to help them navigate and conduct identification transactions. Our platform also connects people and businesses where identification is required, or desirable, even where the business is not required to comply with AML/CTF laws. Our network includes accountants, financial services businesses, lawyers, real estate agents, labour hire companies and recruiters.

In this Q&A, Paul Timms, VerifiMe’s CEO explains more about the breadth and benefit of our two-sided network and how accountants can use a platform that is the safest, most convenient and simple to use platform for managing their customer’s identification transactions.

What do you mean by a “two-sided network”?

Paul: By this, we mean that VerifiMe has both businesses and their customers as participants. That is unique to VerifiMe. Most identification services are focussed on one or the other. So, they’re trying to get a customer to build a digital wallet and then try and find places to use it. Or a business will use an outsourced identity verification service and hand a customer’s documents over to it, usually with no transparency or traceability about who has that document, how it is being used or where it is being stored.

At VerifiMe, we get to see both sides of that relationship. The customer can always check who they have permissioned to see their identity, and has line of sight about what is happening. A business can never rely on a customer’s identity without their express permission, and when the customer gives that permission, the business proves it by using tokens representing the identity proof, rather than the business having to separately copy and retain the personally identifiable information.

VerifiMe can connect the dots between what customers and businesses want, managing identification and compliance in a way that works perfectly for both sides of the network. Everybody wins when there are more connections across that community.

How do the two sides interact with each other?

Paul: If you think about interaction points between customers and businesses who require identification as part of a transaction, they are constantly interacting.

For instance, if I need a tax return lodged with a new accountant that I have hired, the accountant cannot proceed without having identified me first. That’s where VerifiMe steps in. Instead of filling in forms and providing copies of my driver’s licence, Medicare card, pay slip and so on, the accountant can request that I permission them through VerifiMe. At that point I can simply permission the accountant via the network. If I already have a VerifiMe identity wallet that includes the information the accountant needs, the permission is instant and requires nothing further. If the accountant needs other identity information (eg from a company or self-managed super fund) that’s not yet in VerifiMe, then I upload it to the platform and a new token is minted to share with the accountant, all without having to provide the underlying sensitive documents that risk identity theft to the accountant. It’s fast, it’s seamless and its’s an entirely new experience where the accountancy firm and the customer are protected by transacting through the VerifiMe network.

And it’s all stored in VerifiMe for both sides of the network (businesses and customers) to see. The business gets instant insight into its compliance requirements, and the customer knows exactly who has been permissioned through VerifiMe. It provides a level of control and transparency that is completely absent from other solutions.

How does VerifiMe’s two-sided network keep customers secure?

Paul: Firstly, we are always transaction driven. We only collect and tokenise documents that are required for a transaction. That’s important, because we are not collecting information to “build a wallet”, or create some hypothetical online repository of a person’s PII.

When a transaction happens, a business needs to know certain things and conduct certain checks to identify a customer. But the customer shouldn’t have to share that identity information with everyone. VerifiMe guards the underlying identity documents, which are encrypted and the businesses instead receives a token that provides zero-proof knowledge of the identification points relied upon. It is available for compliance auditing if necessary, but it doesn’t require the PII to continually be recirculated.

While we set out to make transacting identity convenient, the slew of data breaches have increasingly brought attention to the risk of businesses holding PII. VerifiMe completely solves that risk, which is a fantastic function resulting from our solution to provide convenience. Yes, it’s breathtakingly more convenient. But it’s also much, much more secure.

The problem is, the more businesses that require PII, the more risk involved at a data breach. We help avoid this risk by allowing businesses to handle the identity part of a transaction without needing to collect and hold this information. At the same time, the customer regains control and can use the VerifiMe network for the next identity transaction they are involved in. Welcome to the era of reusable identity!

For more information reach out to us today.