As a cross-border money transfer service provider, Rebell Pay is operating in a highly regulated, high-risk environment. Given such industry dynamics, its mission is to improve and advance cashless payment systems with a focus on two factors: multi-layered security and effortless user experience.
To keep up with this competitive market, Rebell Pay has proven to offer minimal formalities and no additional fees for payment transfers over the years. The services are simple and centered around a user-first mindset, as it takes only a few minutes at most to make the transfer on the platform, no matter the currency or the recipient. As a result, Rebell Pay needed a more advanced automated solution that would keep up with ever-changing expectations for the users. This meant a quicker registration process, which required mandatory identity verification checks.
For this to happen in practice, the financial company needed to look for a RegTech partner that is a true expert in two fields: Know Your Customer (KYC) verification and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) screening — both of which are vital for onboarding new customers, conducting due diligence and maintaining accurate risk assessment practices.
The Challenges
Due to the connected nature of modern finance, governments worldwide have been expanding KYC/AML policies to prevent financial crimes, putting scrutiny on financial companies like Rebell Pay. However, in practice, due to new technologies, a lack of standardized AML policies across jurisdictions, and the scale of money laundering, there are several challenges that need to be considered.
For Rebell Pay, this meant looking for a new multi-feature and global RegTech service provider that could:
- Ensure regulatory compliance on a global scale.
- Reduce manual labor for the in-house compliance team.
- Improve the customer experience during identity verification.
- Detect AML red flags more accurately, preferably in real-time.
- Offer customization options for a different onboarding flow based on different jurisdictional requirements.
“We wanted to build a fast and easy onboarding process that meets diverse requirements. Since our network consists of more than just domestic payments, we have to adhere to strict global and local regulations,” explained Paweł Karczewski, the CEO of Rebell Pay.
The financial service provider wanted to scale faster and improve identity verification pass rates while identifying potential hazards, such as individuals suspected of criminal activity, including high-risk sanctioned entities, and Identify Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs). For that, an ideal scenario was a pre-screening or fraud prevention solution that had built-in AML checks that would run in the background.
“At the same time, we wanted a multinational system with high accuracy in filtering user registrations into three categories: accepted, declined, or requiring extra manual due diligence,” added Paweł Karczewski.
The Solution
Rebell Pay is consistently on a mission to improve and advance cashless payment systems. With the goal to collect and verify vast amounts of data more efficiently, this also meant creating a more streamlined onboarding process that doesn’t compromise compliance or user experience.
“Because we live in a fast-moving world full of surprises, our mission with Rebell Pay is to make sure our client’s finances keep up with their lifestyle,” noted Paweł Karczewski.
“We value accountability and compliance, which is why we need to take strict and accurate measures to ensure the rightful owner providing the ID is genuine and the one actually applying to open an account on our platform.”
So, Rebell Pay wanted to take proactive steps to reduce fraud risks and improve the KYC process using automation. For this reason, the fast-scaling payment platform implemented iDenfy’s identity verification and AML screening solutions.
Both solutions are customized by Rebell Pay’s team, who was able to build its user onboarding flow with the needed blocks under a single dashboard:
- Government-issued ID document verification. iDenfy’s KYC software extracts and verifies personal data, onboarding new customers in seconds. It helps Rebell Pay manage volume spikes and onboard more users from 200+ countries and territories in their native language, whether on mobile or the web.
- Biometric verification with 3D liveness detection. The AI-powered IDV solution compares the user’s portrait on their ID document with their real-time selfie snap, analyzing biometrics to find a match. The user is guided throughout this quick step, ensuring that the rightful owner creates the account on the Rebell Pay platform.
- AML checks with PEPs and sanctions screening. iDenfy’s AML software screens AML databases, helping Rebell Pay detect money laundering risks or high-risk users by automatically cross-checking their personal information against global watchlists, sanctions lists, and PEP databases.
iDenfy’s solution enabled Rebell Pay to address all AML compliance requirements instead of only the smaller KYC process. With a simple integration and support from iDenfy’s team, Rebell Pay switched to a unified platform where its compliance officers can access verification results, denial reasons (why a user failed KYC), and other history logs linked to AML flags and matches.
“We don’t need manual inspection checks because iDenfy’s solution detects mismatches based on the ability to read the MRZ zone, barcodes, chips, etc.,” said Paweł Karczewski, the CEO of Rebell Pay. “This is why we now have scalable, automated verifications, with proper AML screening on top.”
Why iDenfy?
With a fully automated compliance management system, Rebell Pay wanted to prevent fraud from the get-go, including fraudulent wire transfers or account takeovers. For that, a trusted RegTech partner with years of experience was preferred. Ultimately, it all boiled down to a few factors, such as the end-to-end aspect (if the solution could cater to both KYC and AML needs), automation and customization abilities, including the volume of the supported ID document base.
Rebell Pay chose iDenfy’s KYC/AML tools based on these criteria:
- The ability to reduce cases of fraud through a combination of both ID verification and AML screening.
- Faster onboarding for a wider range of customers, increasing opportunities to scale into new markets.
- Real-time software fraud detection capabilities, enabling analysis of multiple data points more efficiently.
- High KYC accuracy rates and ensured compliant data storage, in line with regulatory requirements.
Using iDenfy’s software, Rebell Pay can automatically accept and verify more IDs from different regions, eliminating issues like different formatting or languages, which iDenfy supports. Consequently, by integrating iDenfy’s software for an extra layer of security, Rebell Pay reduced costs while streamlining risk management, automating due diligence processes, and simplifying ongoing monitoring to maintain accurate client risk profiles.
The Results
With clear documentation and guided support from iDenfy’s team, Rebell Pay switched to a fully automated compliance workflow. By implementing iDenfy’s AI-powered verification solution, Rebell Pay:
- Seamlessly verifies various ID documents.
- Instantly matches the user’s selfie or captured live face to the ID portrait.
Rebell Pay users now complete the entire identity verification process in an average of 40 seconds. Using iDenfy’s solution, Rebell Pay tripled the speed of user verification, eliminating the chances of accepting fraudulent users and those who are attempting to bypass the automated KYC flow during onboarding.
The payment transfer platform was able to integrate iDenfy’s software and migrate it into its existing workflow without any system disruptions. This created a user-friendly interface for both Rebell Pay’s clients and in-house compliance specialists, allowing them to manage all compliance-related processes through a simple, single dashboard. This helped Rebell Pay meet regulatory requirements, reduce fraud, especially related to cross-border payments, and lower KYC/AML costs by 15% through automation.
Additionally, Rebell Pay customized its verification workflows to match local and global jurisdictional requirements, automatically triggering extra AML checks for high-risk users. This streamlined enhanced due diligence and reduced manual reviews, saving the compliance team time — all without extra coding.
“We were able to easily integrate and manage iDenfy’s solution further through the web panel in order to meet compliance with our business goals. Both identity verification and AML screening are key factors allowing us to meet regulations and be sure that our system at Rebell Pay is safe.”
Paweł Karczewski, the CEO of Rebell Pay
About Rebell Pay
- Rebell Pay is an instant cross-border payment transfer platform offering competitive rates for P2P transactions, including convenient cryptic-to-fiat exchanges.
- The platform offers its users a fee-free account and tools like virtual cards to receive, hold, and spend money easily on the app.
Try for free 
