Jeevansathi, one of India’s leading matrimony platforms, today announces a partnership with Onfido, the global identity verification and authentication provider. The collaboration enables Non-Residential Indians (NRIs), citizens from birth or ancestry that reside outside of the Republic of India, to prove their identity online with their local (identity document) ID. The partnership enables users globally to trust conversations with potential partners as part of a secure matchmaking experience.
For more than 20 years, Jeevansathi has been helping Indian residents and NRIs to find the right partner. A key factor behind its success has been a commitment to trust and security, enabling users to build true relationships in a safe environment. This includes offering voluntary identity checks to increase trust on the platform and mitigate fake accounts, an important innovation in an industry without any Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations in place.
However, while Indian residents can be easily verified against the country’s identity database, NRIs must use local IDs in their place of residence to confirm their real identity. Without a way to authenticate global ID documents, NRIs in 13 countries would be unable to show that they are verified users.
As the number of users on the matrimony platform grows rapidly, Jeevansathi required a scalable, comprehensive identity verification service to accommodate its NRI users. By using Onfido’s best-in-class identity verification technology, Jeevansathi can accurately verify thousands of different government-issued identity document types, across nearly 200 countries – allowing NRIs to be onboarded faster and more securely.
Commenting on the partnership, Rohan Mathur, Business Head of Jeevansathi said: “Our aim at Jeevansathi is to foster genuine relationships in a trustworthy and secure way. Identity verification sits at the heart of that, as an important way to help users of the platform feel safer. In our next stage of growth, it’s critical that NRIs can access our global community of users, while preventing nefarious actors from disrupting the matchmaking experience. Onfido’s technology has been crucial to supporting this expansion, enabling us to rapidly onboard users and facilitate genuine relationships.”
To verify their identity, NRI users simply take a picture of their government-issued ID and a selfie. Onfido then confirms the user’s real identity by analysing the photo ID, checking that it is legitimate and comparing it against the selfie image, to prevent identity fraud. This automated process ensures that the account user is also the owner of the ID and is physically present during the onboarding process.
NRI users will be able to voluntarily verify their identities with Onfido. All verified accounts will be signified by a shield icon to confirm their status, showing other users that they are connecting with a legitimate individual.
“Managing and verifying identity with Onfido brings the trust and confidence you would expect from an in-person connection, to the virtual dating world,” said Harvinder Singh, GM APAC of Onfido. “As Jeevansathi scales quickly, we’re excited to provide users of the platform with a consistent, secure onboarding experience, all powered by AI and biometric technology.”