The stakes
Identity verification has a geography problem. In Western Europe and North America, company registries are digital, indexed, often machine-readable. Run a UBO check on a Dutch BV or a Delaware LLC and the data is back before the kettle boils. Move the same check to Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, or Vietnam, and the picture changes. Records are paper-first, sometimes still held in physical court archives. Updates arrive at the pace of bureaucracy. Coverage from the usual data vendors thins out and then runs out.
For a global identity provider, that gap is not an inconvenience. It is the difference between a product that says "we cover the world" and a product that actually does. Every customer trying to onboard a Latin American counterparty or verify an African subsidiary's ownership is a customer the gap fails.
The mandate
Veriff verifies identity at global scale for banks, marketplaces, and platforms. On the personal side the coverage was already strong. On the business side the Western markets were covered too. What Veriff needed was the other half. Real, registry-sourced UBO and company data in the markets where most providers tap out. Africa, broader Asia outside the OECD, and Latin America.
Not "best efforts." Verified company status, ownership chains, beneficial owners, and director records, sourced from each country's official registry, in shape to drop into a live KYB flow.
What we supply
Company and UBO data from the registries Veriff's previous stack could not reach. We do the on-the-ground work in each market. Where the registry is digital but undocumented, we integrate. Where it is physical, we collect at source and normalise. Where ownership is held in nominee or trust structures, we resolve through to the natural person where the law allows.
The result is a single API call into Veriff's verification flow that returns the same shape of answer for a Kenyan or Indonesian company that it does for a German one. Coverage that does not break at the OECD border.
What changed
Veriff's customers stop hitting the wall on emerging-market checks. A fintech onboarding a Latin American merchant, or a marketplace approving an Indonesian seller, gets the same confidence in the answer as a Western check. Edge cases that used to bounce to manual review now resolve inside the automated flow.
For Veriff, "global coverage" stops being a marketing line with an asterisk. It becomes the product.
Why it matters
Compliance is global. The coverage cannot stop where the paperwork gets hard. Ours doesn't.