Quick Intro
QwikPay is a wallet-based QR payment platform that enables merchants to accept payments with zero transaction fees. The company is known as Australia’s first fee-free QR payment platform built outside card rails. Unlike card-linked applications, where the issuing bank is responsible for verifying the user’s identity, QwikPay holds the wallet relationship directly. That means the Australian scan-and-pay app is responsible for performing Know Your Customer (KYC) checks with the same level of due diligence as any traditional banking institution.
As a result, the company needed a new IDV vendor that could automate both document-based ID verification checks and biometric face-matching, as well as Anti-Money Laundering (AML) screening, before establishing a new business relationship with the client. Due to the high priority of good UX and the focus of the business model, where efficiency and convenience are key for the clients, QwikPay wanted to build a reliable, fast onboarding process, which led them to choose iDenfy’s solutions.
The Challenges
QwikPay’s user base consists of both merchants and consumers, who need to be verified before their wallet can be activated. Merchants typically get started in under five minutes: they display a QR code on any smartphone or tablet, and then receive instant settlement to their QwikPay wallet. Consumers scan, confirm, and pay in real-time without the need to physically enter credit card details and with no unnecessary friction that could damage the end-user experience.
For QwikPay, identity verification had to be built directly into the onboarding process so users could create their account and access their wallet immediately. ID verification providers that offered only batch-verification APIs or those that required complex, manual input-based steps were incompatible with QwikPay’s Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP) environment, where users expect real-time account activation.
But for all that to be the case in practice, QwikPay’s team worked hard on three key areas:
- Ensuring the IDV vendor that could ensure compliance with AUSTRAC’s obligations, as well as global KYC/AML requirements and a large document base, since Australia has many residents from all around the world.
- Finding implementation and KYC cost within the startup range, as QwikPay wanted to save costs, especially in its pre-scaling stage and calculate the approximate ROI before partnering with a vendor.
- Making the onboarding experience as smooth as possible to avoid drop-offs without breaking the payment journey, helping the business scale responsibly.
“We needed an onboarding flow that users would actually complete, with pay-as-you-go pricing, seamless verification options, and a standalone integration path,” explained Nik Bavisetti, the Co-Founder of QwikPay. “Most providers built their offerings around enterprise volume commitments, which made them not the best fit for us.”
Another important factor that was vital for making the ID verification process fit QwikPay’s requirements was the fact that Australia’s population created a specific document coverage challenge. Foreign passports, non-Australian driver’s licences, and other ID documents that domestic-only verification providers couldn’t accurately process required a global solution for onboarding overseas-born residents that made up a portion of QwikPay’s user base.
“A KYC solution with poor document support would have simply translated to unacceptable false-rejection rates for legitimate users, directly impacting our mission to make payments accessible for everyone,” said Nik Bavisetti.
Beyond basic IDV checks, QwikPay also needed to satisfy AUSTRAC’s broader AML requirements, which meant that the new KYC vendor had to carry built-in AML screening tools. This was mandatory to make the onboarding journey seamless and ensure that integration and management for both compliance processes, including automated PEPs and sanctions checks, are easily processed through a single integration.
The Solution
QwikPay integrated iDenfy’s identity verification and AML screening solutions, automating compliance-related tasks and customized onboarding workflows under a single dashboard.
Three features made the biggest difference for the end-user experience, which include:
Automated ID Document Capture
iDenfy’s software automatically extracts and cross-checks personal data from 14,000+ ID document types across 200+ countries and territories. For QwikPay, this meant being able to accurately verify both local and foreign identity documents without worrying about drop-offs. For users, iDenfy’s integration meant a simple, few-step onboarding flow.
Biometric Verification with Liveness Detection
The QR payment platform needed a dual-layer verification approach as a way to ensure that every new wallet registration is legitimate, and no bypassing attempts slip through. Users are asked to submit a real-time selfie while the system matches it against the portrait photo of their captured ID. Deepfakes and other spoofing attacks are prevented with liveness detection and advanced 3D facial mapping technology.
Built-In AML Screening
With iDenfy, QwikPay can optimize the onboarding and create risk-based workflows with extra AML checks, which include PEPs and sanctions screening, watchlist screening, and adverse media checks. High-risk users, for example, clients from certain high-risk jurisdictions, can be forwarded to a different onboarding process, while low-risk customers go through the less intrusive verification workflow to maximize conversions while still ensuring full compliance.
With iDenfy’s KYC/AML integrated, QwikPay’s team has full visibility over verification results (denied/approved KYC results and flags/missmatches found for AML screening) on the same dashboard, saving hours of work that would have been used to check all submitted documents manually.
“We evaluated providers across multiple markets, weighing pricing, integration quality, and support. When we connected with the iDenfy team, it was clear they understood what a growing startup actually needs,” said Nik Bavisetti, the Co-Founder of QwikPay.
Implementation
QwikPay integrated iDenfy via API into its existing user signup flow, integrating ID verification steps natively within the onboarding experience rather than redirecting users to an external ecosystem. This meant the KYC process felt like a customized, branded and guided process for creating a QwikPay account.
Why iDenfy?
QwikPay selected iDenfy’s RegTech software because it offered:
✔️ Both KYC and AML solutions under one API
✔️ International document support and high accuracy rates
✔️ Guided, mobile-first verification support for its NPP-native payment journey
✔️ Custom branding options and proper documentation
✔️ Fair pricing structure, especially beneficial for QwikPay’s startup stage
✔️ Support from the Sales and Integration teams
“Every provider we approached came with pricing structures tied to minimum commitments. For a startup still proving its model, locking into those terms would have been a financial risk before we’d had the chance to grow into them,” explained Nik Bavisetti.
The Results
With iDenfy integrated across both its consumer and merchant onboarding flows, QwikPay now maintains a custom-tailored internal compliance system that meets AUSTRAC’s full AML requirements but doesn’t require hiring extra personnel specifically for managing verifications. Since going live, QwikPay has processed hundreds of verified wallet registrations using iDenfy’s ID verification and AML screening solutions.
The collaboration with iDenfy helped QwikPay build an onboarding process that’s fully automated, including vital steps for compliance, such as reading ID document data, running the biometric match, screening against AML lists, and returning the final approve/deny decision. The guided KYC experience means legitimate users clear their verification session quickly and reach their first transaction in the same seamless process, supporting QwikPay’s business goal of providing a real-time payment experience.
With iDenfy, QwikPay:
- Built an onboarding flow where 88% of users pass the ID verification on their first attempt, reducing drop-offs.
- Created a simple wallet activation process, where users complete their ID verification (document capture + selfie + AML) in an average of 50 seconds.
iDenfy also helps QwikPay ensure that its KYC/AML program satisfies all compliance obligations and provides the needed tools to keep an audit-ready history log. As QwikPay scales, iDenfy’s system will help handle large verification volumes, saving time and costs on compliance-related tasks in the payments industry.
“iDenfy’s verification suite gave us the confidence to onboard users at speed, reducing drop-offs at the critical signup stage. More importantly, it gave us a reliable filter against restricted and unverified users accessing the platform, which, for a financial services product, is foundational.”
Nik Bavisetti, the Co-Founder of QwikPay
