Choosing KYC and open banking providers

Coverage before features

Start with the boring question: which documents, from which countries, and which banks. A provider with an elegant interface and no coverage of the market you are entering is worse than a plain one that supports it. Ask for the list by country, and ask when it was last updated.

• —Document types accepted per country, including residence permits
• —Bank coverage by market, and how quickly new institutions are added
• —Language support in the applicant-facing flow
• —Whether coverage is theirs or resold from someone else's network

Ask about failure, not success

Demos show the happy path. Your operations team will live in the other one. What happens when a document photograph is unreadable, a bank connection times out, or a customer abandons the flow halfway through?

The answers you want are specific: a retry policy, a defined fallback route, a webhook that fires on abandonment so the case does not sit silently. If those are vague, budget for building them yourself.

What you get back, and what you keep

Two providers can both say they verify identity and return very different material. One gives you a pass or fail, another gives structured fields, the document image, and the reasoning behind the score. The second is what you need when a decision is questioned two years later.

Check the retention terms as well. If the evidence lives only on their side and your contract ends, your audit trail has a hole in it.

Commercials that survive growth

Per-check pricing looks cheap at pilot volumes and stops looking cheap around the point the project succeeds. Model the cost at ten times current volume, and be clear on which events are billable: is a failed verification charged, is a re-attempt, is a screening refresh?

• —Cost per successful check versus per attempt
• —Minimum monthly commitments and how they step up
• —Notice period, and what happens to stored evidence on exit
• —Whether a second provider can run alongside for fallback

The case for keeping two

Where volumes justify it, running a primary and a secondary provider is worth the extra integration. It removes a single point of failure on your busiest day, gives you a live comparison of match rates, and quietly improves your position at renewal.