Quick Intro
Being in the global private aviation brokerage industry, 5 Star Jets’ main customers are Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals (UHNWIs), corporate executives, and innovators. The company is continuing to scale and modernize aviation finance. Recently, they have become the premier regulated broker, which accepts over 1,000 cryptocurrencies. This allows 5 Star Jets to use not just traditional banking but also digital assets for luxury travel, attracting more new customers.
However, with such a clientele and high hopes for a seamless experience, including the initial onboarding process, the 5 Star Jets team understood they had to find a reliable Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) service provider that understood their industry’s characteristics and had all the necessary compliance tools under the same roof.
The Challenges
Manual Onboarding
5 Star Jets provides bespoke private jet charters and facilitates multimillion-dollar aircraft acquisitions. Operating in this environment means delivering a seamless, high-quality experience for clients seeking luxury services from start to finish. This included careful planning and optimizing business operations that would cater to its clients. For example, making the decision to accept both fiat and crypto payments.
However, the primary challenge was the bottleneck of traditional banking, paired with a manual KYC onboarding process:
“Private aviation is a 24/7/365 industry, but traditional fiat wire transfers are restricted by weekends, holidays, and international banking hours,” explained Alejandro Leon, the CCO of 5 Star Jets.
The delay inherent in traditional wire transfers often resulted in lost revenue, particularly for last-minute weekend charter requests where speed is critical. This was not good enough for 5 Star Jets. UHNW clients expected instant gratification. Manual KYC processes were too slow and clunky for dedicated 5 Star Jets’ customers who value their time above all else.
“If our clients want to fly to Europe on a Sunday morning, they don’t want to wait until Monday for a bank wire to clear,” added Alejandro.
The delay in traditional wire transfers meant potential lost revenue on last-minute weekend charter requests. Furthermore, without a reliable, automated identity verification and AML system, accepting crypto was simply too risky for 5 Star Jets. As a result, aircraft sellers and operators remained hesitant to adopt Web3 payments, due to the growing market of “crypto whales” and the general concern about potential exposure to illicit funds and regulatory breaches.
This hesitation ultimately limited the company’s ability to cater to a fast-moving, high-revenue market segment.
Regulatory Specifics
The 5 Star Jets team knew that the booking process always needed to be seamless: confirming the flight, making the payment, collecting travel documents, and completing the ID verification, all part of the onboarding process, before setting foot onto the jet. However, other factors, like industry specifics, also played an important part in 5 Star Jets’ plan to improve its services.
“Our clients demanded a space for borderless settlements, but naturally, the industry we operate in introduced severe compliance and liability challenges,” commented Alejandro Leon, the CCO of 5 Star Jets. “We needed to guarantee to our aircraft owners that the digital funds were 100% clean and legitimate before confirming a flight.”
For example, UHNW accounts sometimes require different onboarding flows:
- Not only KYC checks, but also continuous name screening against PEPs and sanctions lists should be in place, ideally through automated daily checks.
- If adverse media were found, immediate interim reviews were vital.
Without automation, managing all KYC/AML-related tasks became difficult for the in-house team at 5 Star Jets, making it hard to maintain operational efficiency and timely risk assessments that would not affect the clients.
At the same time, accepting cryptocurrency payments without a robust, automated AML and identity verification framework introduced significant risk. This showed that a flexible IDV provider was a must, as the aviation platform wanted to support real-time onboarding, specifically designed for high-risk clients that would detect AML red flags and trigger different onboarding flows, based on the risk signal.
The Solution
5 Star Jets built a proprietary, institutional-grade “Dual-Layer Compliance Shield” within its newly updated Crypto Payment Gateway, designed to overcome the operational issues that came with a manual onboarding process. For that, the company integrated iDenfy as the critical first layer of this shield, combining both identity verification and AML screening tools. This includes:
- Government-issued ID document capture
- Biometric check with liveness and face-matching
- Background screening against global PEPs and sanctions lists
“Before any client is issued a unique cryptocurrency deposit address, they must pass through iDenfy’s automated system. This ensures we know exactly who is initiating the transaction and that they aren’t on any global sanctions lists,” said Alejandro Leon, the CCO of 5 Star Jets.
Using this automated onboarding framework through iDenfy also enabled 5 Star Jets to customize the onboarding flow and act on different risk triggers, meaning the company can trigger stricter onboarding flows or re-screening processes once a red flag or a match is detected by the system. Extra coding for changing workflows or traditionally complex tasks, such as manual watchlist lookups, is not a challenge or a burden that the company needs to face.
“Currently, we’re leveraging iDenfy’s no-code verification links to securely onboard our VIP clients. This functionality immediately transformed our workflow and replaced the outdated, risky method of emailing sensitive passport copies with a secure, 60-second smartphone verification,” explained Alejandro Leon, the CCO of 5 Star Jets.
For a company that’s working with UHNWIs and crypto transactions, this approach eliminates the risks of onboarding clients who can’t prove their financial background. At the same time, due to automation, no queues are created, maintaining the best possible experience for the client. According to Alejandro, this is critical in a time-sensitive industry like private aviation, where booking speed directly impacts revenue.
The Implementation
Integration was smooth and simple. This allowed the 5 Star Jets team to deploy institutional-grade security with zero technical friction:
“As we prepare to launch our upcoming Crypto-Funded Jet Card, we plan to deepen this relationship by customizing the integration further, ensuring the identity verification process remains entirely native to the ‘5 Star Jets’ luxury brand,” said Alejandro Leon, the CCO of 5 Star Jets.
Why iDenfy?
5 Star Jets chose iDenfy because it offered:
✔️ Both KYC and AML tools under the same platform
✔️ Industry-specific workflow customization options
✔️ Fast and secure no-code verification link generation
✔️ A user-friendly dashboard with all verification results
✔️ A seamless end-user onboarding experience on any device
✔️ Ensured compliance and improved strategy for high-risk clients
The Results
Before iDenfy, 5 Star Jets didn’t have a structured onboarding process that would comply with the needs of its high-net-worth clientele. Clients interested in luxury services, such as private aviation brokerage, expected not long queues and a manual KYC process, but a simple and quick verification process that: a) would not require much manual input; b) would ensure straight access to expected services.
By integrating iDenfy’s AI-powered ID verification and AML screening solutions, 5 Star Jets was able to build a compliant system that supports both onboarding and ongoing monitoring, ensuring that higher-risk accounts, such as its UHNW clients and their crypto-funded transactions, can be flagged and reviewed manually only when necessary. This dual-layered approach helped 5 Star Jets improve trust, which particularly affected the narrative around crypto payments, shifting the perception of high-risk limitations into a scalable and secure revenue stream for the business.
As a result, 5 Star Jets successfully launched its Crypto Payment Gateway with absolute confidence and a 0% fraud rate. In other words, iDenfy’s KYC/AML software worked as a secure foundational ground that was needed to develop and launch 5 Star Jet’s Crypto-Funded Jet Card program, securing the company’s position as the most innovative brokerage in private aviation.
With iDenfy, the company:
- Started fulfilling 3x more charter requests using automation and real-time KYC. Same-day user onboarding removed the previous unwanted barrier of waiting for manual ID document review.
- Achieved a compliant, audit-ready transaction log. This enabled instant processing of crypto/fiat payments for charters up to $9,000,000 with zero instances of flagged or illicit funds cleared through the gateway.
- Reduced user identity verification and AML screening time from several hours to under 60 seconds, enabling 24/7 booking capability, including weekends and international bank holidays.
“Now, every client is onboarded and also screened against global sanctions and watchlists in seconds, which gives our aircraft partners and us proper assurance that every transaction is legitimate.“
Alejandro Leon, the CCO of 5 Star Jets
