Questions,answered.

Anti-money laundering is an international regulation initiated by FATF, the global financial regulator. It was launched to maintain the reliability and stability of the international financial system as financial infrastructure expanded.

AML identifies illicit funds, improves transparency, and strengthens international cooperation to combat criminal activity and fraud.

ARGOS provides various APIs for identity authentication: Global ID Recognition, ID Liveness (fake-ID detection), and Face Compare. These are available individually as engine-level APIs, or combined in the ID check product.

Full documentation is available at developers.argosidentity.com.

KYC stands for Know Your Customer. Starting with anti-money laundering regulation, KYC is the process of identifying customers to block illegal funds and fraud.

All financial flows occur through accounts, so identifying who owns an account is the first step — and it requires a very sophisticated process. We recommend selecting a business operator specialized in KYC to handle this critical foundation.

KYC verification is done in several stages:

• ID document classification and recognition via OCR
• Verification that the submitter is the real owner, using face matching
• Liveness detection to prevent photo or deepfake spoofing
• Final scoring (e.g. ARGOS Score) that combines all signals into an approval decision

This is the difference between a simple OCR tool and a comprehensive eKYC service — the latter gives you a safer, more auditable system.

KYC verification typically follows this process:

1. Customer information collection: basic info like name, date of birth, and address
2. Identification submission: official government document (ID card, passport, etc.)
3. Submission verification: document authenticity, database checks, and Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) if needed

Depending on regulation, additional post-processes such as risk assessment and continuous monitoring may apply.

ID authenticity is verified through multiple approaches:

1. Template matching: ARGOS maintains templates for identity documents worldwide. Each scan is checked against expected regions and fields, feeding into ARGOS Score.
2. Encoded data reading: ID documents embed machine-readable codes (BAR CODE, MRZ). ARGOS analyzes these areas — often invisible to the naked eye — to verify the underlying data.
3. Third-party comparison: Where available, ARGOS compares against trusted databases from government agencies, telcos, or banks that already perform identity verification.

Identity fraud — whether falsified or stolen — enables a range of downstream crimes once an account is created or taken over. The higher the expected criminal proceeds, the more sophisticated the forgery method, and the more frequent the attempts.

ARGOS continuously updates its anti-forgery process to stay ahead of new spoofing patterns, including AI-generated documents and deepfake presentation attacks.

Online eKYC requires a more advanced process than offline face-to-face verification, because remote users have more latitude to manipulate the flow. We recommend building this on top of an integrated eKYC service like ARGOS, and evaluating how flexibly the service aligns with your internal policies.