Indian citizens will soon be using Onfido to start making marriage arrangements. To that end, the company has partnered with Jeevansathi, an Indian dating service that was first established in 1998.
The partnership with Onfido is intended to support Non-Residential Indians (NRIs), which refers to people who do not live in India but nevertheless possess Indian citizenship through either birth or ancestry. Jeevansathi tries to verify the identities of all of its users to build trust between potential matches, but has previously not had any way to authenticate many kinds of foreign IDs. The company has instead relied on Indian documents for the bulk of its clientele, while forcing those in other countries to use the service without verified status.
Onfido’s technology will allow NRIs to verify their identities using the documents in their country of residence. The platform is compatible with thousands of IDs from nearly 200 countries all over the world, and will enable a secure onboarding process for Jeevansathi customers regardless of their physical location.
Jeevansathi noted that the dating industry does not have many of the Know Your Customer regulations that are present in more tightly monitored fields. However, the company believes that voluntary identity checks set it apart from its competitors, since people want to have some assurances about the other person when initiating such a personal conversation. With Onfido, Jeevansathi users will be able to take a selfie and a picture of a photo ID, and Jeevansathi will issue a verified shield icon to that user if the two are a match.
“Our aim is to foster genuine relationships in a trustworthy and secure way,” said Jeevansathi Business Head Rohan Mathur. “Identity verification sits at the heart of that, as an important way to help users of the platform feel safer.”
“Managing and verifying identity with Onfido brings the trust and confidence you would expect from an in-person connection to the virtual dating world,” added Onfido APAC GM Harvinder Singh. “As Jeevansathi scales quickly, we’re excited to provide users of the platform with a consistent, secure onboarding experience.”
Jeevansathi is not the only dating service trying to build trust through digital identity, with DateID and The Meet Group both having partnered with Yoti for similar ends. Onfido, meanwhile, recently provided onboarding services for Lemonway’s payment platform and the Lynk & Co car sharing service.
(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)
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