The customer

Revolut provides one super app for all things money – spending, transfers, savings and investments.

They are a fast-growing financial super app with over 20 million personal customers worldwide, handling over 200 million transactions every month. The app helps both businesses and consumers control their finances, making everything from international money transfers to booking holidays fast and simple.

The challenge

To verify new applicants’ identities and comply with KYC (Know Your Customer) standards, Revolut initially asked for scans of documents and live selfies. The need to provide documents, however, adds an extra, time-consuming step for new customers who then have to wait for the documents to be processed.

Faced with this extra step, some applicants give up and drop out of the onboarding process. Where local KYC and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) regulations allowed, the company wanted a verification process that was just as seamless and easy as Revolut’s global super app.

To achieve this while ensuring total regulatory compliance, Revolut needed a proven electronic ID verification (eIDV) solution with global coverage.

The solution

Revolut has been using GBG’s ID3global solution for a real-time automated online customer onboarding process in the US and UK since 2020.

With reference data for billions of people worldwide, the GBG solution ensures full regulatory compliance while speeding up onboarding and maximising customer approval rates. Its simple dashboard reporting allows Revolut to monitor all identity checks and quickly identify potential issues that require follow-up action.

New Revolut customers now simply download the app and enter identity details like name, address and date of birth, rather than manually uploading scanned images of identity documents. For eligible customers in Great Britain who passed their KYC, Revolut has been able to reduce the time it takes to pass from sign-up from approximately 70 minutes1 down to a little over 2 minutes2, using GBG’s eIDV solution combined with Revolut’s internal models. This is a 97% reduction in a customer’s time to pass KYC.

This combination of GBG solution and internal checks has helped ensure compliance with international KYC standards and also reduced Revolut’s exposure to fraud.

After the first year of operation, GBG’s identity experts reviewed Revolut’s verification results and optimised the matching rules. Adding fuzzy matching for certain fields increased overall match rates while still retaining the same level of confidence in each decision.

In July 2021, Revolut also adopted GBG’s Multi Bureau solution. Multi Bureau confirms a person’s identity by checking against data from multiple credit reference agencies. GBG dedupes the reference data to ensure there’s no risk of double matching. GBG’s Multi Bureau solution helps Revolut to increase the overall customer pass rate.

1. Based on the average time taken for 90% of the fastest customers in Great Britain to pass KYC from sign-up since January 1, 2022 in the KYC flow requiring submission of documents

2. Based on the average time taken for 90% of the fastest customers in Great Britain to pass KYC from sign-up since January 1, 2022 in the KYC flow requiring no submission of documents and using GBG’s eIDV solution

“We needed a reliable system and database that could help us verify an individual so that we could protect the business and our customers from fraud.”

Noa Luthi, Product Owner, Financial Crime and Customer Due Diligence | Revolut

The outcome

By using an eIDV and leveraging identity information from multiple data sources, Revolut can be more confident in its verification checks at onboarding and pass more customers at speed. This has increased customer acquisition volumes and overall revenue for Revolut.

These GBG solutions also ensure a customer’s first experience with Revolut is as positive as possible, with fewer customers now having to spend time going through a long document-checking process.

GBG’s global coverage means identity verification is instantly available as Revolut continues its rapid growth into new territories like Brazil. In the many other countries included in its expansion plans, GBG ID3global and Multi Bureau will help to make customer onboarding just as simple, secure and rewarding as it is today in Great Britain.

"GBG ID3global’s biggest benefits are speed of identity data checks and customer onboarding. Removing the need for document checks reduces friction significantly."

Noa Luthi, Product Owner, Financial Crime and Customer Due Diligence
Revolut