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In the last article, we discussed SIM registration and the option of a digital solution to manage this process. In this article, we will be presenting one of the challenges in gathering this KYC information.
Digital solutions – deployed at retail outlets and on mobile phones – reduce the costs of registration and provide high levels of access to customers. However, the very aspect that makes them so advantageous over paper-based solutions provides a stiff challenge.
Digital Identity Solutions depend on data. In emerging markets, data access in cities is often congested, and there are vast areas where data access may be weak or even non-existent.
The Axon Identity Solution (AIS) has operated in emerging markets for over twelve years. Our engineers and our product has been designed to address these challenges. Offline capability together with automatic synchronisation provides the first step in dealing with these challenges.
The Axon Identity Solution(AIS) is equipped with a fully encrypted offline document store for devices. The agent is now able to save his/her records offline in areas with poor connectivity. A rules engine manages how long and how many records may be saved on the device. Background services upload customer registrations without the user’s action ensuring the fastest possible submission of these documents. This synchronisation is similar to a dropbox or a Google drive where users copy their files, and the application synchronises them to the cloud.
Offline storage together with synchronisation only solves a portion of the problem. While it’s great that the customer document can now be captured in areas with no data access until these records are uploaded to the server they have no value.
Customers want their SIM card activated as soon as possible. If a carrier is unable to do this that customer may choose to use another service provider that can or is in a more desirable location. To address this challenge the AIS application has alternative bearers that can activate the customer’s services. Instead of depending on access to data the application can make use of SMS or USSD as an alternative bearer to activate the customers SIM card.
Uploading the offline records when a user has access to the data network remains a challenge. High levels of network congestion coupled with large payloads of data can make this a slow process. The AXON Applications address this challenge. A highly optimised communication framework ensures that the application is – tolerant of poor networks; manages compression of biometric, binary and textual data to minimise payloads; supports the ability to resume uploads, i.e. it can carry on from where it left off and is capable of dynamically adjusting to the quality of the network available.
Axon Identity Solution offers the ability to both export and import customer records. You export your customer data to a memory card. A courier collects the memory card and delivers it to either a retail or mobile outlet. An agent imports the records and uploads the data to the server. All exports are encrypted.
In this article, we discussed the challenges of using digital solutions in emerging markets where data access may be hampered. We offered many ways to address this through offline storage and synchronisation, alternative bearers, optimised communication frameworks and the ability to import and export records.
