# Know Your Customer in High-Risk Payments: How We Use Veriff at Edge Payment Technologies Author: Ziyan Junaideen Published: 2024-02-21T16:58:02Z Updated: 2026-11-11T05:01:35Z Original: https://www.jdeen.com/blog/know-your-customer-in-high-risk-payments-how-we-use-veriff-at-edge-payment-technologies ![A world map with pins in cities linked by crimson threads](https://www.jdeen.com/images/blog/world-map-06ffd5149d1b9281eed905915da4aaa5.webp?vsn=d) I am the Lead Engineer (Tooling) at **Edge Payment Technologies**, a payment gateway built for high-risk merchants. In a [previous post](https://www.jdeen.com/blog/know-your-business-in-high-risk-payments-how-we-use-middesk-at-edge-payment-technologies) I wrote about how we use Middesk to verify the *businesses* that apply to us. This post covers the other half of the picture: verifying the *people* behind those businesses, which we do with **Veriff**. ### Why KYC matters for merchant onboarding A company is only as trustworthy as the people who control it. A business can be properly registered, in good standing and match its tax records, and still be run by someone using a stolen identity, someone with a history of fraud, or a nominee fronting for an owner who would never pass our checks. That is why Know Your Customer (KYC) is part of our merchant onboarding, not something reserved for consumers. **Before a merchant is onboarded, we use Veriff to verify its corporate officers and beneficial owners.** The people who sign our agreement, control the business or own a significant share of it each go through identity verification. For a high-risk gateway this matters even more. The card volume we process and the industries we serve make us an attractive target for people who want access to payment processing without being accountable for it. Pushing a fake or borrowed identity through onboarding is one of the most direct ways to try. ### What Veriff checks Veriff is an identity verification platform. Each person we send through it completes a short flow on their phone or computer, and Veriff combines several signals into one decision. #### Identity documents The person photographs a government-issued ID such as a passport, driving licence or national ID card. Veriff checks that the document is genuine and unaltered, reads its data, and compares it with the details given on the application. #### Selfie and face match The person then takes a selfie, which is compared with the photo on the document. A stolen or borrowed ID is far less useful when the person holding it has to show the same face on camera. #### Liveness and presentation-attack detection A selfie only proves something if it comes from a live person in front of the camera. Veriff looks for signs that the camera is being shown something else: a printed photo, a mask, or an image or video playing on another screen. As our story below shows, this is not a theoretical concern. #### Device and session signals Veriff also looks at the session itself, including the device and how the flow was completed, which helps reveal attempts that look fine on the surface but come from the same source as other suspicious sessions. #### Watchlists and adverse media Beyond confirming identity, Veriff screens people against sanctions and politically exposed person (PEP) lists and searches for **adverse media**, meaning news reports that link a person to fraud, financial crime or other serious concerns. ### A stolen identity, caught by a selfie One case shows why each of these layers matters. An applicant tried to onboard as a merchant using another person's identity. The ID document belonged to a real person, and the details looked consistent. Then came the selfie step. Instead of their own face, the applicant held up **a photo of the identity's owner displayed on an iPad** and pointed the camera at it, hoping the face match would pass. Veriff flagged the session, and the recording made the attempt plain to see: a screen held in front of the camera, not a live person. The application did not go any further. What happened next mattered just as much to us. **We contacted the real owner of that identity, who had no idea it was being used**, and advised them on the steps to take to protect themselves. Their details were being used to open a payment account in their name. Had it succeeded, they could have been linked to chargebacks, losses and possibly fraud they knew nothing about. For anyone who finds themselves in that position, the usual steps include reporting the identity theft to the relevant authorities, placing a fraud alert or credit freeze with the credit bureaus, watching bank and credit statements for accounts they did not open, and securing the email and phone accounts that are often used to reset everything else. This is the side of KYC that rarely gets talked about. It protects the payment company, but it also protects the people whose identities are being misused, often before they know anything is wrong. ### When the news tells the story The stolen-identity case was dramatic, but adverse media screening has had a broader effect on our decisions. In many cases, Veriff surfaced **past news publications raising serious concerns** about an officer or beneficial owner, such as involvement in fraud, scams or other financial misconduct. The identity checked out; the person was exactly who they said they were. The problem was who that person was. These findings led us to **reject those applications**. A legitimate identity does not make someone a suitable merchant, and we would much rather learn about a person's history from a screening result before onboarding than from a sponsor bank or card network after the losses have started. ### The advantages for a high-risk gateway - **Officers and owners are verified, not just named.** An application lists people; Veriff confirms they are real, present and who they claim to be. - **Stolen and synthetic identities are caught early.** Document checks, face matching and liveness detection together make borrowed identities much harder to use. - **History comes to light.** Sanctions, PEP and adverse media screening show us risks that an ID document never would. - **A clear record.** Each verification is kept with its result and evidence, so we can show our sponsor bank, card networks or auditors exactly how each person was checked. - **A smooth flow for genuine applicants.** Honest merchants complete the process in minutes on their own device, without posting copies of documents back and forth. ### KYC and KYB together Veriff and Middesk answer different questions. Middesk tells us whether the **business** is real and in good standing. Veriff tells us whether the **people** behind it are real, present and suitable to do business with. Neither is enough on its own: a genuine company run by someone using a stolen identity is as much a problem as a fake company run by a real person. Together they give our compliance team a fuller picture before a merchant processes a single transaction, and they help make sure that when we say yes, we know exactly who we are saying yes to.