According to a study, the cryptocurrency market has attained (approx.) $40.7 billion in 2023 with a cap of more than $1.66 trillion, an 11.98% increase YoY, witnessing a remarkable surge with high-profile potential. Besides the growth, it’s a business rule wherever there is a surging industry, scammers tend to find their way to infiltrate that market, and cryptocurrency is no exception. Time Magazine reports that people lose over $1 billion every year due to crypto scammers.
Crypto businesses are finding ways to safeguard their customers from the growing threats of fraudsters through various strategies, including a KYC process. It’s like a security firewall that blocks out all the wrong people and only lets genuine consumers use the service.
Shufti Pro is one of those companies providing SMBs and enterprises with KYC services, especially those in the blockchain industry. Today, we’ve got the CTO of Shufti Pro, Shahid Hanif, who’s also the Co-founder of this company. We’ll ask him questions regarding the crypto market and how his organization fosters a safe business environment within the industry.
Hello Shahid, we welcome you to this interview. To start the interview, please provide some background on Shufti Pro and its role in the crypto industry.
Hello, thank you for having me. Shufti Pro is an all-in-one KYC service provider that offers everything a business needs to safeguard its operations from scammers. We offer a complete suite of user authentication, including facial authentication, 2FA, video KYC, NFC verification, and, most recently, e-IDV, helping businesses to operate in the digital world with confidence and trust.
Our clients are primarily small-to-medium-scale businesses and large enterprises seeking customer identity authentication solutions to comply with global regulations.
Especially in crypto, which has one of the highest numbers of online fraud, we help merchants from becoming victims of imposters through multiple verification checks, including 2FA, face verification, and ongoing fraud prevention algorithms, enabling them to detect deceptive entities on the spot.
In the introduction, we mentioned that crypto scams cost over $1 billion, an almost 12% rise YoY; why do you think the crypto scams are surging when fraud prevention and KYC services like Shufti Pro already exist in the market? Why can’t the market control these fraudsters?
The main reason behind this is the lack of awareness among business owners, which gives an advantage to fraudsters. Many companies work in the crypto field but don’t have any security checks in place for customers’ portals, logins, and even the onboarding page; of course, it’s like giving an invitation to the scammer.
Secondly, many companies still use a weaker KYC that offers no security against evolving cyber-attack threats, including generative AI and deep fakes. They use old-school KYC and ID authentication that can be tricked with artificial intelligence manipulation.
Business owners should stay alert for those ID-proofing service providers that can’t provide solid protection against AI-enabled attacks, as such attacks represent the new frontier of cyber-fraud, making it crucial to choose providers with advanced security measures.
You stated that business owners should choose KYC and IDV service providers that offer protection against evolving cyber threats, so can you explain if your company provides protection against modern attacks? And if yes, please explain.
Of course, Shufti Pro offers protection against all kinds of modern online scams. We constantly update our platform and monitor the fraud trends, monitoring the latest strategies scammers use.
AI is the latest technology used by cyberbullies to commit fraud. To be more precise, they use deep fake technology to mimic the face of a real person through CGI, which tricks the facial authentication system into believing that it’s a genuine entity.
However, Shufti Pro is one of those few ID verification providers that can deter those fraudsters. Our platform uses cutting-edge strategies to detect deceptions. We incorporate depth-sensing technology to identify the z-axis in an image, Since deep fakes are 2D flat images, whereas real faces exhibit a 3D dimensionality, this approach allows us to determine and detect any attempted deep fakes promptly.
Our effective KYC suite, utilizing selfie and document verification, allows businesses to only onboard legitimate users/customers as well as do their on-going monitoring for fraud prevention. Additionally, our 2FA system allows businesses to safeguard their customers’ data even in the case of account takeover fraud. Not just that, Shufti Pro offers a variety of other security solutions, including video KYC, AML screening, e-IDV, and NFC verification.
With all these solutions, the company has become an ideal choice for crypto-field businesses looking to safeguard their services.
Can you tell us about some of the milestones and achievements of Shufti Pro since it has been started?
Within six years, Shufti Pro has witnessed considerable growth and a lot of recognition from SMBs, enterprises, and other giants. During this time, we’ve partnered with over 1,000 businesses to help them fight fraud and meet global compliance. Moreover, the company has launched 17+ IDV products and has won several awards from multiple publications in various categories. Our most recent one is the “Best Client Onboarding Solution,” powered by UF AWARDS 2022. We’re one of those few KYC providers offering completely automated AI-powered IDV and KYC products, including selfie verification, e-IDV, 2FA, and more, which are entirely human-interaction-free. In the future, Shufti Pro aims to focus on launching better IDV products for the world to combat the evolving threats of cyber-fraud.
What is your opinion about the future of blockchain, especially cryptocurrencies?
Cryptocurrencies, facilitated by blockchain technology, are globally accepted without needing a specific regulator, offering a decentralized currency with low liquidity and better transparency. It gives the digital currency an edge over the conventional currencies in which a particular entity controls platforms and money.
However, like every revolution comes at a cost, there is no exception to cryptocurrency as well The absence of regulators and controlling authorities gives a significant edge to scammers to carry out scams more efficiently than ever before. Therefore, businesses and customers need to implement solid security measures and firewalls to mitigate these threats in the future.
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