Verify FAQs

A mobile phone number can help with KYC checks by providing a way to verify a customer’s identity, using the authoritative personal data held by the Mobile Network Operators. This data can be used to perform a range of regulatory checks to prevent online fraud and is definitively linked to the mobile number, which you may be using as a key part of your engagement or fulfilment processes. 

A mobile phone number can help with digital onboarding through providing a trusted and reliable datapoint about your perspective customer. A mobile phone number remains one of the most consistent and persistent aspects of our digital identity. Checking the ownership of a number using our API can be done in seconds and easily integrated into your existing onboarding workflow.

Know Your Customer (KYC) checks are a set of procedures that businesses use to confirm the identity of their customers. KYC checks are typically performed during the onboarding process, and involve collecting and verifying various forms of identity information, such as government-issued IDs, proof of address and other documents. KYC checks are important for preventing fraud, money laundering and other illegal activities.

Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks are a set of procedures that businesses use to detect and prevent money laundering activities. AML checks are designed to identify and prevent these activities by monitoring customer transactions, assessing risk levels, and reporting suspicious activity to relevant authorities. AML checks are required by law in most countries.

Account takeover fraud is a type of fraud where an attacker gains unauthorised access to a customer’s account. This can occur through a variety of methods, such as phishing attacks, credential stuffing, or social engineering. Once the attacker gains access, they can make unauthorised transactions, change account information, or steal sensitive data.

SIM Swap is a type of fraud where an attacker takes control of a victim’s phone number by transferring it to a new SIM card. This can be done by convincing the victim’s mobile network operator to transfer the number to a new SIM card that is controlled by the attacker. Once the attacker has control of the phone number, they can use it to reset passwords, intercept two-factor authentication and gain access to the victim’s accounts. SIM Swap fraud is a growing threat, and can be difficult to detect.

Aside from specific data such as SIM Swap and KYC match, Verify can also provide other datapoints that can assist in understanding the risk that a particular mobile number possesses. This includes network movement (porting) events, real-time analysis of whether a number is actually active on the network, association of the number in many prominent online platforms and many other attributes. 

No additional hardware is needed. In terms of software, all you need to do is make a secure API call to the Verify service with the number that you wish to check and what data you want to see about that number, then integrate our response into your existing workflow, whether that’s for onboarding a new customer, responding to potentially suspicious behaviour or processing a transaction, or all of the above.

Our data is leading the industry in terms of accuracy. It is used tens of millions of times per day to allow the correct and real-time routing of calls and messages. Our data comes from a range of official sources such as telecommunications regulators and operators around the world. Most Verify queries are performed in real-time, so for example when asking the question of whether a number is active, the answer back from Verify is whether the number is active NOW!

Yes. The main input needed for a Verify query is the mobile telephone number, which is sent to TMT ID in international format (which makes every number unique). The Verify API is designed to accommodate numbers on a query-by-query basis so our customers can send a USA number 1ms, a German number the next millisecond and so on. It should be noted that not all Verify datapoints are available in all countries but if you need more information on this we’d be happy to help.

No. Due to the fact that the Verify service involves a strong element of processing personal data, any customer that wants to access the service needs to agree a contract and be approved based upon their customer and their use case. Some of the datapoints available in Verify such as KYC Match also generally require approval from the Mobile Network Operator in order to access. We help all of our customers to go through this process as needed.