kyc (know your customer) ID verification
UBER
User Experience | Product Design | Visual Design | Product Management | Project Management
Uber offers vehicles for hire, food delivery (Uber Eats), package delivery, couriers, freight transportation, and, through a partnership with Lime, electric bicycle and motorized scooter rental. Uber operates in over 900 metropolitan areas worldwide. It is one of the largest providers in the gig economy and is also a pioneer in the development of self-driving cars.
Uber’s financial products — like Uber Cash, provides flexibility and accessibility by providing a universal way of paying across all Uber products — but is heavily regulated around compliance, especially around identity. Uber is required to conduct various levels of KYC (Know Your Customer) procedures to make sure our users are who they say they are by verifying their identities.
the problem
Uber’s KYC processes were product-specific which meant, for example, the Driver KYC process was built within the Driver app and only serviced those users. Making changes to the experience to comply with local regulations required adding or subtracting steps. This became an issue when trying to rapidly expand our financial products to multiple markets at once.
In addition, Uber needed to conduct KYC in all products where they offered Uber Cash — which is essentially in every product they offer.
the approach
Thinking to the future, I wanted to create a system that was product and line-of-business agnostic and scalable to any country’s compliance requirements.
Scalability
Since each country has different requirements for KYC validation, building a system that can dynamically display only the information that is required was essential. Our compliance engine would dictate what pieces of information we needed to collect for a particular user based on their location and the information we already had. Because our system was dynamic, we could display a single system to all our users instead of customizing many different linear experiences. If requirements change, we make 1 change to the compliance engine and the system takes care of the rest.
Product & Line of Business Agnostic
Decoupling our KYC solution from any particular product or line-of-business allows us to launch it from any app and from any experience that requires it. Our goal was to seamlessly display the experience if necessary, then guide the user back into the flow they originally were in. This also allowed us to build and maintain one single solution for the entire Uber suite of products.
the kyc process
To build a comprehensive KYC tool while only asking for minimal personal information, we chose a 3-tier system. We used 3 methods to validate our user’s identities.
Landing page
Building a product and line-of-business tool allowed Uber to trigger this tool from almost any process that required identity verification. Since we were essentially interrupting a user-initiated process, we needed to be extremely clear about what we were asking, why we were asking, and how we would perform this process.
Method 1Sanction screening
The first step in the KYC process, Sanctions Screening, checks the user’s provided information to ensure they are not apart of any government sanctions — in other words, the user is not flagged by local/federal agencies for financial misconduct.
Method 2ekyc
The second step in verifying a user’s identity is eKYC. Depending on the region and country, we collect additional personal information such as local ID numbers, addresses, occupation, etc. and validate the data provided.
Method 3document scan
Last but not least, is the process of collecting and validating a government-issued document or ID. We can dynamically ask for valid documents, provide an interface for taking a photo, then process the document and validate if the document is indeed valid.
Identity verified!
After verifying the required information, we seamlessly bring the user back to continue the action they originally set out to do.
(Of course, if there was a problem with any part of the process, we provide relevant and helpful messaging that would help the user complete the ID verification process!)
