Jean-Christophe Tisseuil, Chief Marketing Officer, at Oasis Smart SIM, and Pascal Decaux, Telco business developper at ARIADNEXT, discuss the importance of eKYC and how it will positively impact eSIM adoption in the future.
Q: So, what is KYC? What are the problems you are trying to solve when providing KYC and eKYC?
Pascal Decaux: "ARIADNEXT is specialized in ID proofing, which is another name for KYC (Know Your Customer). Together, we are the first European companies in the KYC domain. We help companies in banking, finance, gambling & telecom to onboard their customers while complying with regulations. KYC detects fraud and ensures the best customer experience possible. So, this is our domain of expertise. In the past we mostly collaborated with telecom operators, but, with digitalization, we have shifted more focus towards retail and online subscription."
Q: How will eKYC answer operator's requirements?
Jean-Christophe Tisseuil: "I believe that telecom operators, similarly to banks across the world, are mandated by regulators to know their customers. It’s a very well-known process in the physical world. However, in the digital world, KYC is perceived as a "roadblock" by many companies because it raises the problem of replicating the physical process in a digital environment. I have discussed this topic with many different operators and I must say that eKYC will be a market enabler. It will be 1 of the 2 main market enablers for eSIM. Once eKYC will be identified as providing a full digital journey and once we have a sufficient amount of devices on the market, i.e. enough smartphones and devices, eSIM will probably see a large market adoption providing a fully digital customer journey a replication of a physical process in a non-physical environment.
Going forward, I think it will be critical to market adoption. We see that there are 200 operators across the world. We see that eSIM, in terms of volume of download, has yet to reach its peak despite the fact that 200 operators have deployed eSIM. There are countries where you can only buy eSIMs by physically going to the shop.
But what is the benefit of eSIM if you need to go to the shop? In other countries, you can buy an eSIM subscription from your operator but you need to wait for the courier to arrive to you to check your physical KYC before activating your eSIM remotely. This is not the right user experience. It’s is not the promise of digitalization. I really believe that eKYC and remote sim provisioning will accelerate remote SIM provisioning capability and market adoption."
Q: Could you give us ARIADNEXT's perspective in that area? Have you had discussions with operators on the deployment of KYC/eKYC?
Pascal Decaux: "Yes, I agree with your view on the KYC market and obstacles. It's the same for all operators. We need to have a good customer experience. We need to fight fraud, and we need to comply with regulation. We imperatively need to offer an experience that is practically the same as a physical face to face interaction when we onboard eSIM/SIM for the customers. This could be done entirely online, but it can also be brought to shops because we all have computers, smartphones and tablets in shops. What we designed together, is an application where you start by verifying the customer's ID, you can then complete and activate the eSIM profile.
So we decide with the operator, depending on their customer journey, if we should only go for ID verification, or if we should also add details about bank account proof, or a document that confirms your address. We can also provide more security by making it live.
Live detection ensures that I am the same person as the picture on my ID. In the bank sector, which is more advanced and regulated, we bring more safety and something equivalent to face to face. We can bring a human in the loop thanks to our team of fraud experts. So we have real human verification on the document/video made.
These are the different levels of KYC and eKYC that we can implement and that we sell to operators in the banking and telecoms sectors in France and other European countries. We are focused on European countries but also have good experiences in other continents. So that's our experience."
About ARIADNEXT
ARIADNEXT is a company from Bretagne, France and a pan-European leader of digital identification both from a distance and at physical sale points for contract subscription purposes while complying with regulations to fight against fraud and improve the customer experience. ARIADNEXT is now part of the IDnow group which are ARIADNEXT’s German counterparts, founded in 2014. Oasis and ARIADNEXT have combined forces to offer an end-to-end eSIM in the box solution.
About Oasis Smart SIM
Established in 2011, Oasis Smart SIM is a France and Singapore-based company simplifying Telcos, Service Providers and OEMs’ adoption of eSIM by providing a range of GSMA-certified eSIM infrastructures, platforms and services designed to simplify technology. Oasis Smart SIM is now a member of the GSMA and TCA (Trusted Connectivity Alliance), ranked by Counterpoint Research as one of the top 10 GSMA-Certified eSIM technology providers in the world.
Oasis Smart SIM is a subsidiary of Tata Communications Limited, a digital ecosystem enabler powering today’s fast-growing digital economy.
