Online Document Verification Solutions for Travel & Tourism Sector
The digital boom in every service sector has led to online solutions to cater to everyday tasks. Digital or online document verification procedures have gained much significance in multiple industries and areas. Document authentication is crucial for the customer onboarding of financial and non-financial organizations. They use digital means to attest their customers’ documents for their identity verification.
Document Verification – Why Is It Necessary?
Cyberspace faces looming threats of data theft, hacking, phishing, identity impersonation and fraud, along with financial crimes such as money laundering and terrorist funding. According to the official data by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crime Report 2021, more than 100,000 data breaches and identity theft occur every year. Thus, combating these challenges has become the need of the hour. Various ways have been devised to mitigate fraud and prevent financial malpractices. Online document verification is one of them. Digitally optimized document verification is performed to verify the authenticity of documents via digital means. It streamlines the organization’s know-your-customer procedure by enhancing its identity verification measures.
It holds equal vitality in the travel and tourism sector as any other industry, be it financial or non-financial. Digitization of traveling has led to facilities such as e-visa applications, online document submission and authentication, and e-tickets. It has eliminated the time-consuming manual procedures and conditions of being physically present at a specific location. All the tasks can be performed online and within a few minutes. Most significantly, online document verification in the traveling sector enables fraud deterrence. Therefore, it aligns the tourism and travel industry with the established anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulatory standards. Consequently, it proves critical for compliance.
How to Verify Documents – A Guide for Travel & Tourism Businesses
As mentioned, online document verification is used to assess the originality and legitimacy of the submitted documents. Online document verification may include the following government-issued documents:
- National identity card
- Social security number
- Passport
- Driver’s license
Your travel and tourism business should also require clients’ proof of residence through utility bills and bank statements. Other than them, you may also collect tax bills, and employment documents, if needed. The online document verification procedure works by scanning and verifying specific security features, like official stamps, holograms, seals, fonts, watermarks, and owner’s signatures. The travel and tourism industry can highly benefit from digital document authentication to identify imposters and fraud elements and enhance the overall security apparatus.
Data Extraction through OCR/ICR for Online Document Check
Travel and tourism agencies should use cutting-edge character recognition technologies to extract data during online document verification. Optical character recognition is an artificial intelligence-powered data-retrieving software solution. It scans the document and converts its contents into digital information. OCR allows seamless data retrieval and enhances identity verification. It enables the travel sector to authenticate the document text using machine learning. Likewise, intelligent character recognition is an upgraded technological solution used for the same purpose. Its deep learning capabilities scan different document layouts and fonts to extract their data. ICR also deals with handwritten documents, and this feature makes it a unique technology used in data extraction for online document verification. Therefore, OCR and ICR prove to be ground-breaking innovations in artificial intelligence that convert the identity document’s data into digital content for online document check.
Document Verification Service Providers
Several authentic SaaS (software-as-a-service) providers offer effective and up-to-the-mark solutions to combat the challenges of fraud, money laundering, etc. The travel and tourism industry, operating globally, can reap the benefits of such service providers for customers’ identity verification. They offer software solutions to accelerate and elevate the online document verification process. Furthermore, by employing technological programs, travel agencies can free their customers from carrying documents while traveling, check-ins and flight bookings, etc. Most significantly, digital document verification service providers enable the travel industry to detect suspicious individuals, such as imposters, money launderers and fraudsters, to enhance border control security. Therefore, the travel and tourism sector complies with AML/CFT regulations to its full potential and aid in mitigating crimes.
Other Advantages of Online Document Verification
Some of the advantages of digital document verification are already stated. However, it possesses other multi-dimensional benefits for customers and travel businesses alike. They are presented below.
- Online document verification provides a user-friendly experience to clients as they can undergo the identity authentication process while on the go.
- It eliminates the possibility of identity theft and impersonation.
- The digitization of the entire KYC and document verification procedures yields convenience for tourism agencies because they become hassle-free and instant.
- Digital mechanisms boost customer confidence in travel and tourism firms because of their secure and efficient environment.
- Similarly, online methods improve the organization’s reputation in front of regulatory bodies by ensuring adherence to AML and CFT regulations.
In Conclusion
Simply put, online document verification proves to be significant for the travel and tourism industry, like the finance and non-financial sectors. Technology-backed digital solutions have replaced conventional identity verification methods. Therefore, they aid in fraud deterrence and regulatory compliance.