Recently, the Supreme Court of India has made an interesting observation. It ruled that, if satisfied with the driving skills, the owner of a vehicle is not expected further to verify the genuineness of the driver’s license while appointing.
Unfortunately, as an institution, financial or otherwise, you do not enjoy the same luxury of subjectivity!
A Driving License is a critical document to verify the signature and identity of an individual. It not only proves that your prospective customer or employee is trained to drive a particular category of vehicles but also guarantees that they are who they are claiming to be.
However, as you may probably agree, verifying Driving License details is easier said than done. Conventionally, you must depend on your onboarding team to manually collect and authenticate the information. What if this entire process can be digitized and automated?
That’s what a DL verification API is built to do!
What is a DL Verification API?
A Driving License Verification Application Programming Interface or a DL Verification API allows your customer or employee onboarding system to communicate with third-party applications or databases seamlessly. In this case, a DL Verification API can ingest Driving License information like the holder’s Name, Address, Date of Birth, and more. The information is instantly validated in real-time against the transport department databases of the central and state governments in India.
A DL Verification API makes your onboarding process smart, efficient, and secure. However, using a DL Verification API that can screen and validate the data at source also ensures that you onboard only the right customers and employees.
The Increasing Popularity of DL Verification API Across Businesses
In fact, such is the convenience of this tool that today, the use cases for DL Verification API are rising exponentially across businesses where identity verification is required. For instance:
Banks: As Driving License is listed as an acceptable Proof of Identity (PoI)/Proof of Address (PoA) document under KYC norms, DL Verification APIs are increasingly being used for opening new bank accounts, loan assessments, and issuing credit cards.
Insurers: Like banks, today, insurers are also using DL Verification APIs, pacing up the cycle for verifying the identity and address of the applicants while issuing general and life insurance policies.
Transport Businesses: Verifying the authenticity of Driving Licenses is crucial while hiring drivers for a transportation and logistics business. Here a DL Verification API can simplify the job of confirming whether an applicant is clear to operate a particular vehicle type and conducting broader background checks.
The examples of using a DL Verification API in daily business operations are growing by the day. However, do you wonder what has led to their widespread popularity within such a short time?
The answer is simple: an overwhelming need for speed, convenience, and security. While much of the KYC and customer onboarding journey has already been digitized, there was no reason for verification of the Driving License not to follow suit!
DL Verification Challenges That Made DL Verification API A Necessity
In retrospect, although being a critical requirement, the conventional practices of collecting and verifying DL information have been fraught with many inconsistencies. These include:
Inefficient Data Extraction: Extracting and collating data from Driving Licenses can be tiring, stretching your onboarding teams to their limits. Primarily, they receive either physical copies of the document or PDFs through either emails or messaging apps and have to feed the data into the system painstakingly.
Lack of Standards: The Driving License formats vary across the states in India. This is where your basic OCR system, running a rule-based solution, may come short in capturing the data with coherence and standardization.
Incidence of Frauds: Driving License fraud is not uncommon in India. Conventional verification practices are unlikely to keep pace with the ingenuity of the malicious actors, exposing your organization to reputational and compliance risk. Notably, in 2019, in a submission before the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways informed that 30% of Driving Licenses in India are fake!
AI-powered DL Authentication API Suite By Perfios
To help your business combat such challenges and ensure a smooth onboarding experience for your customers, Perfios has introduced a suite of intelligent API technologies. It includes a DL OCR API and a DL Verification API, both powered by AI. They are a part of Perfios award-winning cognitive FinTech solutions portfolio that can seamlessly interact with the systems of all Road Transport offices across the country and other government databases.
Perfios DL Authentication API suite ensures a flexible KYC authentication experience for your prospective customers or employees. It allows them to initiate the authentication process by directly feeding the Driving License details into the system or uploading a DL photocopy.
In case a photocopy of the DL is uploaded, Perfios AI-based DL OCR API scans and extracts the following information from the document:
● Full name of the Driving License holder
● Date of birth
● Present address
● Blood group type
● License number
● Date of issue & date of expiry of the Driving License
● Class of vehicle the Driving License holder is authorized to operate
● Signature & photograph of the Driving License holder
The DL OCR API runs on Perfios proprietary cognitive technology, allowing it to perform miles ahead of the conventional systems in the market today. For instance, it can:
● Auto recognize document type (JPEG, JPG, PNG, PDF, TI)
● Identify Black & White documents such as non-color photocopies
● Flag blurred documents
● Flag incorrect or incomplete/illegible documents,
● Provide a confidence score to gauge OCR accuracy
The extracted details and the photograph of the Driving License holder are passed on to the DL Verification API that instantly cross-checks and authenticates them using Perfios extensive network of integrations with various Government databases.
The process is entirely intrusion-proof from a data-security standpoint. Since the DL Verification API stores no information about the DL holder, client confidentiality is guaranteed.
For your better understanding, here is a graphical representation of how Perfios AI-powered DL Authentication API suite operates at the front and also behind the scenes:
And There Is Much More…
Do you believe Perfios AI-powered DL OCR API and DL Verification API can bring value to your business? But wait, there’s more!
Perfios offers an extensive range of intelligent verification and diligence solutions to work alongside the AI-powered DL Authentication API suite to ensure a smooth and secured account onboarding journey for your business.
Here’s a quick take on the rest of them:
PAN Verification Advanced API: Perfios PAN Verification Advanced API guarantees instant and reliable verification of your customers’ PAN details while preventing any fraud attempts. It is an easy-to-integrate tool that ingests PAN details and verifies them against the NSDL database.
PAN to Aadhaar Link Status Check API: According to Income-tax Act, 1961, it is mandatory for all PAN holders to link their PAN with their Aadhaar. Perfios PAN to Aadhaar Link Status Check API is designed to ensure that you onboard only those customers who comply with this rule.
It instantly verifies an applicant’s PAN/Aadhaar linkage status and provides a yes/no response, simplifying decision-making. Also, Perfios PAN to Aadhaar Link Status Check API can operate with or without a specific Aadhaar number, making it unmatched in its product category.
Aadhaar Verification API: Perfios Aadhaar Verification API is a simple and easy-to-use tool that saves your team the trouble of manually checking the authenticity of your customer’s Aadhaar details. It can take up the XML or ZIP file of Aadhar downloaded from the UIDAI portal, run verification against the government databases, and deliver the output almost instantly.
Aadhaar XML: If your customer chooses to share the Aadhaar in the XML format, Perfios Aadhaar XML can read the file to extract the identity information and cross-check them against it the UIDAI databases to instantly provide a match score.
eAadhaar Download API: Perfios eAadhaar Download API allows your onboarding teams to securely verify and download the eAadhaar on behalf of the customer for completing the KYC process. The tool operates seamlessly across devices and ensures that the business correspondents can deliver an end-to-end digital onboarding experience for your customers.
206 AB Compliance Status API: The Finance Act of 2021 introduced Section 206 AB in the Income-tax Act 1961. It has imposed a higher TDS/TCS burden rate on ‘Specified Persons.’ Being a tax deductor and tax collector at source, this has increased your compliance burden as a bank or a Financial Institution.
206 AB Compliance Status API simplifies the job by integrating directly with the Income Tax portal. It instantly verifies whether a PAN holder is a specified person and qualifies for a higher TDS burden.
Voter ID Verification API: While onboarding a customer, Perfios Voter ID verification API allows you to instantly verify whether the individual holds a valid Voter Card issued by the Government of India and has furnished authentic identity proofs while applying.
Passport Verification API: Passport Verification API ingests the passport number or passport image of the applicant, cross-checks the details against government databases, and instantly verifies whether your prospective customer indeed holds an authentic document issued by the Government of India.
