WISE AI Awarded Top 5 Out of 804 Digital ID Startups Globally
BANDAR SUNWAY – The Global Startup Heat Map by StartUs Insights, an Austrian database platform providing information on innovation, technologies, and emerging companies, has named WISE AI among the top 5 digital identity startups out of 804 from across the world. WISE AI is proud to be recognized among the best in our industry worldwide and as the sole representative of Southeast Asia.
The top 5 startups have been handpicked based on criteria such as founding year, location, funding raised, and others. The insights of this analysis are gathered from the StartUs Insights Discovery Platform that is powered by Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI), covering over 2 million startups and scaleups globally.
The Preferred Digital Identity Enabler
Known as the “Face of ASEAN” by our partners, WISE AI develops facial recognition technology mainly modelled for the banking and finance industries, as well as, for government services and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). We are recognised as the preferred digital identity enabler in Southeast Asia due to our laser focus on analysing Southeast Asian faces.
WISE AI’s facial recognition engine is trained over millions of face pairs with the emphasis on ASEAN facial features and skin tone to attain better facial accuracy results for the ASEAN market. Compared to our competitors, our facial recognition technology is developed in-house without white labelling from overseas principals. Besides facial recognition, using AI we also enable digital identity, identity verification, and electronic Know-Your-Customer (e-KYC) management tools.
For WISE AI, e-KYC technology has always been our main focus. WISE AI has developed the industry’s leading e-KYC and Digital Identity solutions that help enterprises shorten the customer onboarding process by up to 95%. The e-KYC technology we have produced has gone through 100% in-house research and was developed to assure a quality solution that truly meets market expectations.
How Digital ID Drives Business Opportunities
Just a few years ago, managing a business was relatively simple. Employees would be hired after having gone through rounds of reference checks and interviews. Meanwhile, clients and vendors would be onboarded through personal relationships. But technology changed all that. Employees are now hired remotely, and vendors and clients are based abroad. Consequently, ID verification tools and solutions became vital to businesses.
Digital identification, aka Digital ID, can be authenticated unambiguously through a digital channel, allowing access to banking, government benefits, education, and many other essential services. Of course, the risks and potential for misuse of Digital ID are real and deserve careful attention. However, when well-designed, Digital ID enables civic and social empowerment. It also makes possible real and inclusive economic gains — a less well-understood aspect of the new technology.
As remote working and digital adoption becomes a new norm, we have seen the benefits that businesses can gain from implementing this technology firsthand. With a significant number of individuals turning to digital spaces to conduct business and personal activity, businesses need to be increasingly careful of assessing the real identity and intention of people presenting themselves online.
That, coupled with an increase in identity fraud, is the reason why Digital ID verification is currently spiking in demand and is a key consideration for the digital transformation strategies of many businesses.
With a Digital ID solution, such as WISE’s eKYC110, businesses can more easily onboard new customers and partners. Through access to Digital ID information, they are also able to offer personalised services to their customers, which enhances the overall customer experience. Our eKYC110 also offers instant identity verification, helping you prevent fraud and identity theft while providing a seamless onboarding experience with our high accuracy recognition models.
Furthermore, Digital ID has enabled businesses to globalise quickly. By using Digital ID verification, a business, no matter big or small, can more easily expand into new markets, increase its employee strength, and get new customers. Another added benefit for businesses, utilising Digital ID will ultimately lower the production cost of their products and services.
e-KYC Around the World
All over the world, there is now high demand for fintech innovation and virtual banking, and the growth of the e-KYC industry is undeniable. With the COVID-19 pandemic remaining a prevalent problem, governments are now seriously considering the adoption of e-KYC into their own bureaucratic processes in the public sector.
BaFin, the financial regulatory authority for Germany, responded to public demands in 2014 for an even more convenient onboarding process by exploring ways to incorporate video verification within the e-KYC process. The updated regulations implemented in 2017 eventually enabled institutions to conduct customer identification and verification via a live two-way video link with a compliance professional.
When it comes to Sweden and India, they are considering a much more radical approach to e-KYC. Their approach would involve the creation of a federated Digital ID framework, which will ultimately put the responsibility of collecting, processing, and safeguarding citizen data onto the government. All this information and data can then be referred to by financial institutions when verifying the identity of a prospective custom.
Having a centralised KYC solution and platform can deliver great cost savings to financial institutions. This is because they would not need to go through the process of establishing their own e-KYC framework. India’s Aadhaar e-KYC system, which is now serving more than 1.31 billion users, is one of the pioneers among e-KYC solutions and can be regarded as the reference point for current standard and future e-KYC models in years to come.
About WISE AI
WISE AI is an award-winning Artificial Intelligence company specialising in digital identity technologies. We develop world-class emerging deep tech that is adopted by the government and multiple industries. Our AI-powered solutions include EKYC, digital ID, digital signature, and blockchain. Our technology is optimised for the recognition of ASEAN faces.
