Building Trust in Identity Verification with Matt Collis, CEO of StackGo
In a recent episode of the Veriff Voices podcast, Chris Hooper from Veriff spoke with Matt Collis, CEO of StackGo, about the importance of software integration in identity verification. Matt highlighted StackGo’s mission to simplify app ecosystems, especially for businesses at risk of fraud. StackGo integrates seamlessly with existing tools to streamline identity proofing, delivering a quick and reliable user experience. The conversation touched on growing fraud risks, the need for privacy in identity verification, and how collaboration with Veriff has boosted trust and convenience in the process.
Transcript
Welcome to the Veriff Voices podcast, a collection of conversations with leaders from across the industry, sharing tips and valuable insight into shaping the future of online identity. This podcast is brought to you by the people of Veriff, rebuilding trust in the digital world. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Veriff Voices, the podcast where we talk about fraud, compliance, technology, and all things related to identity verification. Verification. My name is Chris Hooper. I am director of content here at Veriff, and joining me today is Matt Collis, who is co-founder and CEO at StackGo. Today’s episode, we’re going to be focusing on implementation, specifically about sort of software and getting the right tools into place at the right time, and how building trust begins from that very, very start of the process there.
So, Matt, welcome, first of all. Thank you very much for joining us. Let’s have a bit of an intro into you first and sort of your background, your experience, and kind of your journey so far. Yeah, cool. Thanks so much, Chris. Nice to properly meet you. And yeah. So, yeah, thanks very much for having me on today’s podcast. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve been building B2B software for the best part of 15 or more years now. This is my third startup. And so I built a business that I sold to an ASX-listed company a few years ago. And then I got into the idea of like SaaS integrations and the importance of making functionality convenient to the place where business users want it in their existing software.
I also built a – my second business was a privacy-focused business. We helped cryptocurrency projects in the preservation of user identity privacy. And I guess those two things ended up merging. I sold that business to one of the crypto projects, which is like a privacy-based browser. And then I got really interested in this idea of this emerging requirement for identity proofing, which is on all regulated and businesses at risk of fraudulent behavior. Merging that with this theme of app fatigue among businesses as well. So they want to engage and buy this guy or they need this functionality, but they also don’t want an extra tab on their browser and yet more software to learn. So that’s kind of like my background and why I got into this space in the first place.
Yeah, it’s fascinating, isn’t it? That sort of, you know, there’s so many tools available to businesses these days. There is definitely that sort of fatigue piece that you mentioned there. And I think StackGo has a really sort of interesting sort of premise behind it as well, I think. So I think sort of built. We’ve talked from that. So do you want to tell us a little bit about the company first and then we can get into a bit more detail after that? Yeah, sure. So as I mentioned, we picked up on this idea of app fatigue and the emergence of app ecosystems. And so we built StackGo quite literally to help businesses make their stack go, as it were, if you said, pardon the pun, pretty simple. We’ve been going about four years.
We’re based here in Australia. We’re backed by Antler VC. We’ve got, actually, we just tipped over today. I saw. Just tipped over. We’ve got over 400, sorry, 700 business users. We’ve got clients mostly, probably evenly split between Australia, UK, and the USA. And we serve mostly regulator at-risk businesses. So for us, that’s financial services, legal services, real estate, and then there’s some sub-verticals of that. But what really makes us different is about the integration. So, you know, we strive to make the identity proofing and screening process convenient. And so we’re going to be able to get our clients to use the software that we’ve got already in the software that those businesses already use and make it really quick and simple for them to install and get familiar with using.
That’s great. And I hear very familiar with a business name that does exactly what it says on the tin. Veriff is obviously in the same boat as that as well. Let’s talk a little bit about the partnership that our two companies have together and some of the benefits of what you’ve seen so far from working with us. Yeah, for sure. So when we, you know, we went on quite a procurement process to look for, you know, we’re looking for, first of all, you know, international coverage was really important. You know, the robustness and the resilience behind the process so that we could see that there were already the, you know, the correct level of security measures in place in order to, you know, ascertain a high, resilient, strong outcome in terms of how you determine the actual identity of an individual is very important to us.
We didn’t want to go back and start, you know, getting question marks over all that kind of stuff. And then I think one of the most, well, one of the most important things for our clients is really about the customer, the end-user experience and the convenience. And that just comes up time and time again, every prospect, every client that we work with, they always want to see that experience firsthand. And the fact that you can get that basic Verification done in, well, as doing it in about 30 seconds with a decision in about five seconds, that really is marvellous. I guess the last thing probably not directly impacted, impacting our clients, but what impacts us is a very friendly API, one that we can work with and that we can rely upon.
And so both from the process perspective, but also the backend integration, we were able to quite quickly establish a very good working model where you know the very identity proofing process complemented our ability to make that convenient inside the software that our business customers already use. Absolutely. And there’s a couple of words that you sort of used in there, sort of simplicity, ease of use and that kind of thing, which I think will come up again and again and again throughout this conversation, actually. I think that’s, I think one focus you had there was on the sort of the business, I suppose, and how easy it is for them to integrate the system. What about the sort of the other side of the coin, which is for their customers as well?
Is there a piece around how sort of security can be improved, but without sort of impacting on the customer experience for them and making sure that the user journey for the end customer is very smooth as well? Yeah, for sure. I think I would. So I’ve touched upon, you know, the slick experience and actually, you know, getting the identity document photo taken and the selfie taken, the biometric matching, which is really important. What’s important for our business users is about presenting the verification process in a way that their end users can trust. And there’s a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which we can encourage that. So some of that is in the framing and the communication.
So we spend a lot of time, sort of crafting, helping our clients craft the messages that they need for their end customers. Often that comes back to indicating the necessity through regulatory requirements or other compliance steps, but then also presenting the benefits to the users, like how it helps them protect their tax affairs, for instance, or protect their, you know, home ownership or other asset ownership. Okay. So that’s a really important part of it. And then reminding them around the setting them up, priming them to know that it’s both a simple process. So back to that point, one that they can complete very, very quickly and seamlessly, but also that their identity is then also preserved and protected in a professional way and that it’s not, you know, shared with third parties.
And, you know, one of the key benefits, I guess, that come from the integration perspective, which we can delve into is we provide a natural layer in terms of preservation. We’re having that identity protection because via an integration, any user within a business can trigger a check, but only users within the business that actually need access to the Veriffication session can then actually see it. So, there’s some really, you know, subtle and not so subtle ways in which we present an overall, an overarching, you know, presentable format to the end user that, yeah, provides them the confidence that they need to then go into that session and complete it quickly. Yeah, I totally agree with all of that.
So let’s talk a little bit again then around the sort of the businesses that you’re working with, maybe, and the sort of the types of work that you’re seeing. So is there a particular sort of gap in the market that you guys are looking to fill or are filling? Yeah, I think like, You know, for us, we are very targeted at that, I guess, small to medium enterprise. We generally draw the line around 200 employees. The only reason for that is that anything above that, they generally have their own IT team. And whether or not that they, well, they definitely can’t build an integration faster than us because we can build it in about three minutes. So by the time they’ve even sat and talked about how to design an integration, well, we’d already be live.
But, you know, IT teams in general can just start to, you know, ponder about whether they could build it in a different way. And at the enterprise level, you know, they’re most more likely to want some kind of custom workflows that whether or not that we can help them with, it ends up being a little bit of, you know, augmented from, you know, a productized flow. So we generally help that small to medium enterprise. The key markets and the gaps are in these, you know, what we’re seeing is in enterprises that are really prone to fraud. So, for instance, there’s some real niches within real estate. We’re seeing a lot in particularly short-term property leasing. So self-storage, this idea of, you know, shared rooms or shared office space where either the, the tenant or the tenant’s customer needs to be Veriffied.
We have a big for instance student real estate business in the US where we’re Verifying all of the host families and then all the students along with an additional background checks. And then as we know, like regulations, because of the amount of identity theft that’s occurring globally, we’re seeing regulatory bodies in each, within each jurisdiction impose new rules on the participants. So for instance, Australia, we just had a first round of identity proofing compliance for accountants that’s now going to be expanded in quite public fashion to extend into AML screening for accountants, financial planners, lawyers, and real estate agents. And I think that’s going to be a theme that we see for that SME who are, that’s the gap, that’s that, that absolute need, whether it’s a fraud risk or a compliance requirement.
So for instance, and I think that’s going to be a theme that we see for that SME who are, that’s that, that absolute need, whether it’s a fraud risk or a compliance requirement is that they then have to implement a process and that’s where they get stuck. And that’s where they get stuck. Do they do it manually? Do they go on and try and install a second piece of software that they have to go and learn? Do they go on and try and install a second piece of software that they have to go and learn? Do they think about investing in the cost and time it takes to build an integration or do they go with us? And that’s where we fill a real market need, uh, very, very conveniently and quickly.
And that’s where we fill a real market need, uh, very, very conveniently and quickly. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a really good story actually. And I think that’s something that we see a lot from our side too actually is that a lot of these problems. Yeah, if you are at a very big, large enterprise organization, you may have teams that are dedicated to these things. But even then, I think it’s one of those problems that the regulatory landscape is changing all the time across jurisdictions, isn’t it? I mean, you know, you could look at the US and the, you know, the, the laws around age vacate. For example, the different laws around election Obama’s situation with respect to gender equity and national security regulations, which are different from state to state, for example, and things like that.
So to have your teams be able to keep up with that knowledge is tricky in and of itself. That’s even before you get to the tech implementations and things like that too. So it’s definitely, I can sort of see a mirror to what you’re saying there from the type of things that we see as well. I just want to talk a little bit around the sort of the tech, the implementation side of it particularly. I know the Stackdo is great actually at sort of integrating with the most sort of popular CRM systems that most businesses have. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because I think that’s really important to sort of, yeah, be able to sort of enhance that customer Veriffication piece without necessarily having to change the stack that you’re working with.
So again, coming back to that ease and simplicity bit, but you just want to sort of tease out some of the detail there. Yeah, for sure. So I think, so back to, yeah, the initial point is we help the businesses stay within the tech stack that they’re already familiar with. So when we install the software, we’re literally adding a button. Think of it as a button, or it might be a checkbox or a drop down. The button may vary from platform to platform, but generally it’s down to a single click. And in many cases with some platforms, that trigger can actually be automated via an internal workflow. So actually the KYC AML process can be completely automated. The setup process is instant. The clients don’t need any technical skills.
So, we’re talking with a big partner of ours yesterday who asked, well, what’s the difference between us and Zapier? I said, well, okay, go on, show me a Zapier workflow that can build all of these things and who’s going to do it and who’s going to support it. You know, you’re looking at least a few days or a few weeks to get anything close to working. And then as we know, Zapier is not an end-to-end workflow. So what we do is that when the client, a non-technical person within the business environment wants to install us, they literally create a free account with us. They click an integration, they create a free account with us, they create a free account with us. So we can share the data between our platform and the business user’s platform.
That could be a CRM, a practice management software. We have basically anything with an open API. So there’s about 7,000 apps at our last count that we can easily add if it’s not already there for us. They authenticate the account. We then will automatically create the integration by way of those additional fields that then instantly enable the functionality. Now there’s a short setup process because when the trigger happens, we send out an email to the end client or SMS, which just requires a little bit of branding and tweaking to make sure that our clients are comfortable in that it looks like it’s from them and it’s using the words that they like. But you know, I just onboarded a 100 plus accounting firm this afternoon in 20 minutes.
That included the integration, the customized branding. The training deck is like three slides, it’s like click this button, then this is what’s going to happen. And that’s what you need to know happens at the end. And they’re done, they’re good to go. So yeah, there’s a lot of themes of simplicity and non-technical requirements and true non-technical, not non-technical for a person that can actually get their head around technical concepts, but truly non-technical implementation and easy to use. Yeah. And it’s so important for businesses of any size. That’s that sort of speed of implementation, I think. So one of the things that we’ve found recently with some of our research, looking at sort of how much money businesses are actually losing to fraud and trying to sort of put a dollar value on it.
Some businesses can be losing, I think it’s sort of 90% of businesses can be losing up to 10% of their revenue per year to fraud. So that means that there’s a real sort of time imperative. Every month that goes by means another chunk of money that’s lost and that kind of thing there too. So it’s really, really important that this can happen quickly. Have you seen sort of any sort of a benefit like that from any of your customers? Any sort of anecdotal stuff that they’ve reported about how successful they are? Yeah. So some of the benefits that they’re seeing and because of that speed implementation. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it’s tax season here in Australia. So like that’s July 1.
So, as you can imagine, we had a lot of interest on the weeks leading up to, and then the week since July 1, when everyone’s trying to get their tax affairs sorted out. So, everyone’s onboarding with their new tax accountant for the year. And there’s a lot of pressure on businesses implementing a new workflow quickly so that they were selling their tax accounts for the year. So, that’s a lot of pressure. And so we’ve done that. I think we’ve onboarded in the dozens of accounts in the last few weeks, just over that period. And as I said, anecdotally, as I just pointed to the accounting firm today that we onboarded in 20 minutes and they’re set up and ready to go. It’s like testament to that side of it.
Outside of Australia, we see, I think it was a real emerging category. I’m not quite sure how to put my finger on it, but it’s actually its commercial real estate. It’s that storage category, the self-storage or property leasing or, you know, house sharing type environment, micro-leasing, if you like, or property micro-leasing might be a word for it. And they are very prone to fraud. So people try and rent out those rooms for goodness knows what reasons and God knows what kind of like, you know, nefarious or other criminal behavior or bad actors you don’t want to let into those. And they’re very, very precious. And, you know, spend, invest a lot of time in trying to prevent it, but they literally can’t, you know, we are seeing, you know, through the various systems, we’re seeing fake IDs get detected that would easily pass a human eyeball.
So it’s kind of like, you’re almost, you’re, you know, you’re almost lost before you start. If you don’t have a system like there is in place to actually do that kind of level of robust process. Most obviously, I guess, you know, you talk about the quantifiable value of money. Yeah. We see like, you know, payments, uh, lending businesses. We just on-boarded a factoring business, uh, which is like a payday loan for small businesses in the U.S. They have fraud and bad actors all the time. So this is an absolute godsend for them that they can now really sort of sleep at night, but also save themselves absolutely fortune in, in, in lost revenue. Absolutely. And I think you mentioned before there was an anecdote about say, uh, a class-action law firm, uh, legal firm, I think I’m assuming in the U.S.
That, uh, that couldn’t make their payouts until, until they had this Verification system in place. And so that was one of the speedy ones. I think that you, you referenced in a previous conversation we had around that sort of thing. Do you want to just talk a little bit about that one too? Because I thought that was quite interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a, that is a really good one actually. So this is a, uh, I better name them, um, but they’re a market leading, um, class action law firm, class action, I think is more of a US thing than anywhere else in the, in the world. Uh, but, uh, yeah, they were literally under pressure. They’d completed a, uh, a case. They had quite a number of plaintiffs that they need to needed to pay out.
And we’re facing the, the prospect of having to, you know, manually authenticate the identity of these individuals. And this happened to be, look, I don’t want to, you know, suppose where nefarious behavior goes on, but let’s say it’s in the crypto category. Right. So I think, you know, there’s more sensitivity around privacy and, you know, bad actors than as, as anywhere, uh, you could argue and they needed to get that done resiliently and quickly. Their payout was due within a few days. Uh, we were able to get them integrated. Yeah. In that timeline or fully branded or working. I think we’ve done, actually I haven’t done the last check, but I saw 80% of the checks were complete KYC AML screening within the first day. So that was really good.
Um, you’ve actually just reminded me of a, uh, another case. I just, uh, did a case study today with a company in New Zealand, that needed a shareholder. This is an unusual use case. They needed a, um, a quorum of shareholder voting on a very special, um, case for the future of the company. They had three and a half thousand people to Veriffy and authenticate their vote for the outcome of this special vote within two weeks. We were trying to even calculate how long that would take them to do manually. And we were like, we think that’s at least four weeks of work to do inside of two weeks. And again, we were able to get that up and running within a few; it was, it was up and running and tested and live within a few days.
They could then go and spend more of their time on the PR, on the comms and all the other kind of like management tasks. Um, so the ROI on that would be at least 10 to 20 times. Um, and like quite, it’s hard to put a quantifiable ROI on something that’s actually impossible, almost impossible to do without this kind of technology solution. Yeah, it, it, it really is. And I think that’s what you sort of hit, a good point there actually is a sort of a theme that comes up a lot in our conversations with prospects and customers too, is that, um, it’s almost your, your kind of, you, you’re, you’re outsourcing this problem. So you don’t have to worry about it. You can focus on everything else that does generate you business.
So if it’s stopping fraud, if it’s compliance, uh, if it’s an onboarding, sourcing out to the customer experience and things like that, like, yeah, that’s something that, uh, that we’re experts in. So it is sort of leave us to that where you can focus on the thing that you’re, you’re not the subject that you’re an expert in, uh, to generate your business money. So you don’t have to worry about that stuff. And I think that the fact that I do that very, very quickly with the tech developments that you’ve, you’ve sort of, you know, intimated today and, and, and sort of talked about, I think is, uh, is super important and enables businesses to be, uh, you know, really a lot, get a lot sharper in their efficiencies and, and that kind of thing.
And calculating the ROI is always a tricky, tricky thing to do, but it’s, uh, it’s almost the, uh, you know, the intangible costs, which are the things that are being, you know, being, being wiped out there. So, um, do you want us to talk a little bit around kind of, uh, trust? It’s a subject that kind of comes up a lot for, for us, for obvious reasons. I mean, we’re dealing in that sort of, um, online security space and, and, and, you know, the internet these days is a very, uh, you know, there’s a, there’s a lot of mistrust around and for, for probably good reason. Um, do you think that, uh, the types of identity Verification that you are kind of working into with your customers there are helping to sort of build that trust, uh, from the very sort of beginning of a customer interaction?
I mean, it’s, it’s quite a, you know, almost before sort of a customer starts to use an online service. Is that, is that probably a fair statement or do you want to sort of, uh, elaborate a little bit about that? Yeah, look, uh, I think, you know, the market still has a bit of catching up to do, um, because as we know, it’s becoming increasingly easy to create some of these, you know, fake IDs, um, or to, you know, retrieve stolen identity information, which a lot of the market isn’t aware of. And that’s highly problematic. And I think consumers, I mean, this is, as I mentioned, my second business was actually tapping into at the time, the increasing concern that the end customers have about sharing their identity with yet another organization.
Um, and so the problem almost becomes a circular problem as more organizations ask for the verification of someone’s identity, therefore more identity information gets shared in, in the cloud. Therefore, you know, depending on the security, obviously I’m not talking about our relationship here. We have a market-leading security lens, but, uh, other solutions, whether that’s manual or non-integrated solutions are prone to the exposure of that personal information. And so then that becomes circular: consumers become even more distrusting of, of, of the process. So there’s a real uphill battle that, that as I guess, you know, solution providers in this space need to be cognizant of to keep streamlined, keep robust and preserve the security for, for, for the end user’s sake as well.
Do you sort of see, um, you know, that sort of space around, uh, privacy and reassurance, I suppose, as being a differentiator in some ways, right? I mean, I think that’s, that’s not, you know, it’s not the case for all companies. I mean, what is, is it, there’s something there that Stackdo is offering that is, uh, in terms of that kind of safety and regulation piece and the sort of protections you have for customers. Is that something that’s kind of unique, do you think in the kind of a selling point? A hundred percent. Yeah. Like, for um, I’ll give you a couple of examples. Like, so for some verticals, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, they actually need to retain the information of someone.
Like if you’re writing out a loan, um, if that loan goes bad, you definitely need to have something to hand over to the police, right? Um, so, uh, there’s some industries that just lend itself towards, you have to retain it, whether that’s for a compliance reason or a risk reason. Um, for certain categories, again, I’ll come back to the Australian accounting example, and I’m sure, I’m sure there’s just others globally, but this is an example where, you know, accountants, uh, in Australia, actually asked or encouraged, I don’t know how sure it’s enforced, but not to retain client information. And so, privacy and security is one of the top questions that we get from that segment of the market.
It’s like, not only do we not want to see the data, we don’t want to, we don’t want to collect it if we don’t have to. And they just don’t want to touch the data. There’s been too many data breaches. There’s been too many head, you know, bad headlines, negative headlines about businesses. And, and, and there’s a bit of a fear factor from, um, businesses like that, that have had almost that fear imposed on them by the regulators to, to preserve that level of security and privacy. And yeah, like thankfully through, you know, some of the natural protection security layers that we have between ourselves and in your platform, and then also via this integration, as mentioned, like, you know, what, what we, it is a selling point that when we can demonstrate, look, via, because we do it via integration, all of your staff can do the basic things like trigger a check or see the outcome of a check.
So they can say, I want to Verify this person and they can see the result. This person’s been Verified. Um, but they can’t see any of the personal data. They can’t even access it. Um, and that is a really big selling point for industries like that, where that privacy concern exists. And yeah, that, that really does help. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think you kind of sort of intimate to a, a, a, an important point there actually is that there’s sort of, there’s levels to this service, isn’t there? So depending on the industry that you’re in might be financial services, which is heavily regulated. And as a result, there’s certain things you have to do and you have to comply with others.
Uh, you know, when you head towards sort of, you know, into those sort of marketplaces or even sort of the dating platforms, uh, social media platforms and so on, um, where leg regulation is a little bit lighter. Um, there are other things that you, you know, the other considerations there that, um, that you can kind of judge the service you need based on, on, on the industry you’re in. So I think there’s a real sort of tailoring, to, to your specific use case, which is, uh, which is really cool actually. Let’s talk a little bit around the, the sort of the main challenges, if you like, in the market environment at the moment. I know that, uh, you know, whenever I ask this question to people on this podcast, the digital IDs come up all the time.
And so maybe that’s one to focus on first, but what are the sort of some of the other things that you’re sort of seeing and some of the things that you’ve learned in your, uh, sort of recent interactions with customers over the last six months or so? Yeah, look, I mean, I I’d love to hear from you actually. I’d love to get an update on what your view is on digital IDs. We do get asked that. I generally don’t, walk around with my drive, my physical driver’s license anymore. So that’s, uh, you know, and I know a lot of people that don’t, so that’s always a thing. I don’t think it’s, um, at this point in time, um, a massive stumbling block, but I’d be interested to hear, to hear your, your thoughts on that.
Maybe let’s just pause there and I’d love to hear your thoughts and then I’ll, I’ll tell you about some other areas that I’m sort of seeing. Sure thing. Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the, you know, being an Estonian company and Estonia being a very sort of digitally forward place, I think they’ve, they’ve had kind of digital driving licenses for years and it’s definitely really been sort of, uh, I think physical, physical documents are almost a thing of the past there, but, uh, it is sort of one of those areas that we can see a lot of development in. And, uh, and I think that, uh, what, you know, one of the, the, the advantages that we have actually is talking.
One of the things we talk about a lot is this sort of reusable digital identities, which isn’t, you know, in the case of, uh, you know, us here, we’re very focused on that piece and, uh, and looking at how people sort of don’t have to go through this sort of rigorous onboarding process every single time, if they’ve already done it at one of our existing customers. So I think that’s an area of development for us that is really, really exciting actually, to, to sort of make that, uh, be able to have that level of trust without necessarily having to go through that onboarding every single time with every single, uh, you know, customer they use it. So, uh, yeah, we’ve got the technology to do it.
It’s just a matter of, as you say, that kind of, uh, you know, sort of, uh, public perception of, of how that data is being used and that kind of thing too. So I think that’s the, that’s the real challenge for us when it comes to digital IDs, but, uh, it’s, you know, again, it’s a very regional thing. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a sort of different stages depending on where you are in the world and that kind of thing too, but it, it, it feels to me as though it’s fairly inevitable. That’s the way things are going. I’m completely honest. Well, I, I, I’m glad to hear that. I mean, I, I, I certainly hope so from a consumer perspective, like that certainly seems to be a more sensible way, you know, for a privacy-conscious consumer to Verify yourself once.
I think the, you know, we have seen a few of those efforts, like you talk about, you know, jurisdiction in different regions in Australia, there are certain, you know, innovative bodies that are trying to do something similar, but taking a different approach. For instance, by connecting with, you know, institutions that have already Verified your ID, like, you know, banks, uh, for instance, that have already got a lot of your personal information. So rather than getting you to go through the verification process, they’re trying to tap into an institution that can be trusted. But you know, I haven’t seen as yet a really slick process for that. I think that, that on the usability spectrum, it’s pretty clunky.
If you want to Verify yourself, you’ve got to then log into your bank and then hang on a minute, a minute ago, you’re asking me for my ID. Now you’re asking me to log into my bank. Is that, I don’t know, like, I’d like to see some evidence of that working. And you know, that might be because you’re trying to buy some alcohol online and you’ve got to log into your bank to prove your age. I don’t know. The things just don’t quite add up, but then on the other side, it’s hard because as a, as a technology provider, like how do you then get regulators? It’s hard enough to get a regulator locally to rubber stamp your solution, to tickle the boxes of actually what it is that they’re trying to achieve.
And in most cases, quite poorly written. So getting that on a global scale, past the consumer adoption, I think that’s, it’s inevitable, but it’s a real uphill challenge to get to solve those, those sides of the problem. Hopefully we do. Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think the answer to that actually may lie in the, in the biometric side, to be completely honest, it feels to me as though, you know, that that’s, that’s an area that, so that the very first moved into very strongly actually over the last, last two years. And that’s using sort of facial recognition as, as your form of ID effectively. It’s, it’s a lot more unique. It’s non-transferable. There’s, there’s so many sorts of security benefits from it. And, and of course that ease of use piece is kind of ticked off with that.
It’s, you know, it’s a lot quicker to just, just to take a selfie than it is to sort of go through a whole sort of onboarding process and, and everything else. At the moment, that’s still rooted in, in a digital document that is linked to, you know, a government, government database and so on. But, but I think the, the, the days of having those, the, the, the, the, the, the days of physical documents be the basis of things and maybe, you know, we’re maybe sort of moving into a bit of a changeover period where actually you can use your physical identity as, as something online in the digital world as well, which is yeah, I say it’s a really cool development. And I think that the biometric space is, is, is the one to watch.
That would be, be my advice for sure. Yeah, no, I was just going to say that I really love that. And I agree. And our clients love it too, because, you know, going back to that issue of portability across different jurisdictions, if you want to do the traditional approach of Verifying with a government, that an ID document is legitimate, if you’re missing the biometrics, all you’re doing is validating the document exists. You’re not validating that the person is in possession of that document, nor are they even the same person. So it’s yeah. Biometrics is adding so much value in both making it, you know, a single consistent and seamless process to Verify anybody anywhere. But also do a higher standard that, you know, I would be surprised. So you might have a better view.
But I’d be surprised if many regulators globally have fully thought through the benefits and have instead resorted to more traditional methods of, of validating someone’s identity, which has, you know, which you could poke holes in all day long as to, you know, it’s, it’s various strengths and weaknesses. So I just wanted to comment on that since you brought up biometrics as a way of solving for the future, because we were seeing the benefits already. And I think there’s a lot that could be said for that. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think, you know, you’re back to your point a moment ago about sort of, you know, having to log into your bank first and things like that.
I think biometrics possibly allow, you know, access to something like a digital wallet, for example, which may have all of your crucial, you know, your, your pieces in there with your links to your bank, your, to your mortgage provider or whoever it may be, if it’s a different company and things like that. So I think sort of access to wallets is maybe the link that is, is going to, from a consumer point of view, that sort of really defines what the direction of this, this takes in, in, in the future. And sort of just talking about the future, actually, it would be good to sort of just get your, get your take on, on some of the trends you maybe see coming down the line for us, actually.
What is the sort of the, you know, the types of things we need to be looking out for in the, in the next 12 months or so? Is it mostly around sort of fraud or are there other things that you’d point out around freedom of implementation possibly that could get faster and faster? Or what are the things that you, you can anticipate coming from, from, yeah, StackGo and from Veriff in the future? Yeah, look, I mean, of course, increased risk of fraud. That’s the, yeah, that’s the number one trend. So, you know, whether that has a direct or indirect impact on a business, that’s here to stay and it’s just getting worse. So, you know, thankfully the solution we have in today is already matching it on, on par with, I believe what the, the, the market needs in that regard.
But it certainly seems like, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the Veriff establishment and product vision is, is, is robust enough to, to, to keep up with the, the trends as they, as they emerge. I’m, you’re more of an expert than I am to talk, talk to that, but that’s inevitable. We’re also seeing, you know, this, I think I touched on it earlier about this increasing regulatory control imposed on the SMBs. So we touched on this earlier. We are, you know, we are seeing regulations in this space, obviously in conjunction with the increased risk of fraud is the increased regulations. I mean, you can join the dots here in Australia, for instance, for, you know, the volume of tax fraud that existed through the, the tax office that they quantified and were able then to, you know, automatically start to impose that back onto, you know, the bodies that are involved in, in,
the processing and, you know, assessment of tax affairs for individuals has to be tied back to someone that you actually say who they are. We’re anticipating here, you know, that soon, well, we know that the AML screen will come in. We’re also expecting tighter regulations around not only new clients, but existing client bases as well. It’s a bit loose at the moment. It’s probably when I’ve said this to somebody the other day, I think from having clients in New Zealand and UK, the, the regulations are so much tighter. Here, like a director can pretty much say, ‘I’ve known this guy for quite a number of years’ and they can bypass the identity proofing. I’m like, ‘So that’s going to go, right?’ So we’re going to see tightening up of that kind of stuff.
And that does worry me a little bit into how we can keep the technology in line with what, you know, regulators can understand and impose on, on the, on the industry. And the other thing quite, of course, I have Nick, you know, guys says around, you know, SAS implementations. So we see two trends in SAS. We see the horizontal SAS, which is kind of like your, you know, generic platforms, like your CRMs and your accounting tools and your recruitment tools like HubSpot zero or employment hero that resolve the problems of lots of problems for specific businesses. And so, you know, we have design patterns to keep up with, with those so that we can continue to have this rapid and seamless integration experience. We’re also seeing a lot of competitive tension within each vertical.
So there’s a lot of software that’s specific to the vertical. So we’re seeing a lot of software that’s specific to the legal practice space, to the storage space, to the employment space, to, you know, the education space; that where they are modern cloud-based SAS platforms that have an open API, but don’t necessarily have the evolved ecosystem that the Salesforces and the HubSpots of the world have. So we know that there’s going to be increasing demand to have this kind of identity proofing and background screening functionality, both broad and also deep in all of these verticals. And that’s obviously our objective is to stay up to speed with those trends and have it available in as many systems as possible, as quickly as possible. Awesome. And that sort of anticipates my next question a little bit actually.
So what is it that sort of excites you about that sort of the business process aspect of this and kind of how that can develop, I suppose, in the near future? I think that there’s a, you mentioned some of the case studies earlier on that, you know, with more existing customers. But is there sort of, is it just more of the same or is it going to be more and quicker? What’s the sort of kind of thing that excites you about this? I don’t think we can install it quicker than, you know, well, I said three minutes. I think you can actually install it. I think I timed myself. I managed to go from a new account to integrated within 90 seconds. So, I don’t think we can improve on that.
And I’m not sure that the delta on making that any faster is going to have a big improvement for our business or impact on our businesses. But yeah, the thrill of seeing happy clients is just always the thing like going from this sort of anxious manual processes, handling people’s data, driving license, is it secure? Is it compliant? Is it not? How do I know it’s fake? How do I know they are who they say they are? This fraughtness and this, you know, really unwieldy and inefficient process to going to something that’s streamlined and integrated and easy to use that. And that is just more of the same thing. I’ll just eat that all day long. Thanks very much. I just absolutely love it.
You know, we literally just sometimes jump into calls and the first thing out the prospect’s mouth is ‘I love your software.’ You’ve designed it so well. You’re making this so easy for us. And I can, I can just live, live on that every day. But look, you know, I think going back to other areas, I am really interested in seeing the evolution of the, you know, the identity proofing and technology landscape. I think we’ve, we’ve touched on that and I’m really excited to see, you know, what they bring to the table and how we can, you know, together bring that to life for, you know, our customers. I’m a bit of a geek. I, I’m also really excited about things like API.
And what, you know, we can only work with the APIs that we get given within the SAS platform. So, you know, when high drive or zero or FYI docs or HubSpot update their APIs, HubSpot just released sensitive field handling. So now we can post personal data back into sensitive fields that couldn’t be done before, or we can now automatically set up clients in FYI docs, which is a bit, a big tool in the accounting space that you can use. Yeah. It used to be a 10 minutes of implementation process, and now it can be done automatically. I’m excited by all that stuff as well, because, you know, that’s just going to help solidify, you know, that idea of a integrated identity proofing approach.
And, you know, I know that’s not exciting the vast majority of people, but for me, that’s where we can actually make things make really cool things happen and deliver on what we promise. Absolutely. And it goes back to that same point again, doesn’t it arouse sort of, you know, outsourcing that expertise and sort of, you know, leaving, leaving business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just everyone who’s been involved in that ecosystem really focused on what it is that they do best and, and, and. What it is that makes their money and getting sort of that,’re, you know, getting the APIs to work in the best possible way, getting the information implementations worth as quickly as possible. It’s all part of that process, I think.
Just, just to round off then, just one last question is what could we expect to see from the sort of the partnership between a stack of a very friendly people in the next few months? Yeah. Well, definitely more of the same. You know, we just doubled the number of checks over the last quarter, were you know, opening and expecting that to continue to double in the near future, hopefully at a rapid pace, but there’s definitely going to be more of the same. We are also expecting innovation; so, we always first look at anything that we think can add value to our clients. And so, we’ll continue to bring about that innovation and just make it ever more convenient and robust for our clients to access it and integrations.
So we’re just going to continue making that grade of security functionality and ease of use available in more platforms than ever before. I have got zero doubt that we will be in more SaaS platforms than any other identity verification or proofing or background screening provider on the planet. We already can claim that. We’re already there. And I can tell you that the team here is just working really hard to improve, on those that we’ve already got, and we’re already in those niche platforms where we know and can understand and navigate how to more quickly do our job of getting those integrations happening faster. So yeah, we’re really excited about working on the other side, the downstream side for us, which is the distribution through those SaaS partners – those platforms like HubSpot and Xero and FYI and others have been really key to us.
So we’re really excited about working on the other side of the platform. And the biggest part of our growth to date is to then continue to work with more of those platforms that have those existing large customer bases that we can get the functionality out to really, really quickly and conveniently. That’s awesome. That’s great to hear. It’s a very exciting time. I think it’s just about time, actually. So we’ve got to wrap up there. I think we could go on for another hour or so, but this just tells me we’ll have to get you back at some point in the future. We’ll talk about this in more detail then. So let’s wrap it there. And Matt, first of all, thank you very much for that. That was really, really interesting and covered a lot of ground. And so, yes, as I say, thanks for joining us. It was a pleasure to be here. And yeah, of course, I’d love to be back. Thanks so much. Great to hear. Okay. And thank you, everybody, for listening. We’ll catch you next time. This podcast is brought to you by Veriff. Identity Verification made simple. Learn more at Veriff.com.
