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Digital Financial

Digital Financial

Regulatory and
Supervisory Infrastructure

Digital platform for identity verification and authentication eliminates compliance barriers for low-risk account onboarding.

Kiva’s pilot implementation in Sierra Leone models a federated approach alongside regulators, policymakers, and both formal and informal financial service providers. Aligning all stakeholders behind a holistic, compliant digital identity and eKYC solution enables financial access and inclusion for one of the most unbanked populations on earth.

Identity is the key to accessing the formal financial system. But efforts to expand the use of digital ID must overcome a significant hurdle: complying with regulations that are designed to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing. While necessary, these regulations can also be a systemic barrier for the unbanked. A robust digital ID system can enable remote and low-risk onboarding while strengthening due diligence of bank customers.

Five steps to systematic financial inclusion

Digital connectivity has laid the groundwork for systemic inclusion, but there are two other key steps before capital flows can be unlocked. This is where Protocol comes in.

1

Internet Service

2

Device Access

3

Trusted Identity

Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations prohibit financial service providers from onboarding new customers without valid identity credentials. These regulations aim to counter money laundering and terrorism financing, yet unnecessarily excludes hundreds of millions of people from the formal financial sector because they are unable to prove who they are.

4

Verifiable data

Unbanked borrowers have robust economic activity , but cannot reliably provide it to financial institutions. Verifiable data unlocks this activity from the informal financial sector.

5

Flow of Funds

Over the next five years, Kiva Protocol will scale to new countries with the goal of reaching 250 million individuals worldwide.

Kiva Protocol implementations will:

Deliver effective and secure digital financial infrastructure

  • Official identity credentials include reliable, secure, and consumer-centric digital IDs
  • Flexible, open-source architecture supports a range of authentication frameworks (biometric, password, OTC, PKI, smart card)
  • RESTful API endpoints support streamlined integration of eKYC services

Support regulatory and compliance modernization

  • Remote authentication of official identity supports compliance with regulations for low-risk accounts
  • Large-scale government-to-person payment programs reduce fraud and leakages

Enable operational & financial sustainability

  • Open-source and vendor-neutral design minimizes costs of replication
  • Easy-to-use APIs and SDK toolkits enable last mile integration of eKYC onboarding capability by financial services providers
  • Subsidized infrastructure and progressive pricing ensure financial sustainability while extending zero-cost onboarding to the last person.