By Modupe Gbadeyanka
As part of its determination to make the Bitcoin space safer for its customers, Paxful, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace, has announced teaming up with a digital identity and address verification company known as Jumio.
This is to improve Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures and implement Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements onto the marketplace.
Jumio’s AI-powered Trusted Identity Service and verification process will help minimize risk and ensure all users have submitted proper documentation.
Jumio’s end-to-end identity verification and authentication technologies will be used to fight fraud and maintain compliance when onboarding users in order to continue to enrich the community that already exist on the Paxful platform.
By adding Jumio’s ID verification to the platform, Paxful has taken a stance to improve its AML procedures and compliance program in every operating country.
Paxful is constantly improving to protect honest customers in the marketplace. The company boasts a growing community of consumers in Africa; and their feedback has been vitally important in advancing security and compliance on its peer-to-peer marketplace.
Through Jumio’s AI-powered Trusted Identity Service, Paxful will now be able to verify customers’ real-world identities, with a simple ID scan and real-time biometric authentication and liveness detection which will go into full effect in April.
Paxful will now require users around the world who reach an equivalent of $1,500 in trade volume or wallet activity to verify their accounts through ID verification.
In addition, users who reach $10,000 in trade volume or wallet activity must provide ID verification as well as address verification.
Paxful has also invested in the new Compliance and Information Security team. They have hired Lana Schwartzman as Chief Compliance Officer. Lana has 14 years of experience in compliance and anti-money laundering and prior to coming on as CCO at Paxful, she was a manager in the Regulatory and Compliance Risk Group at Grant Thornton LLP. Her compliance experience included working in Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley. She will be enhancing the current compliance program and growing the existing compliance team to better serve the needs of Paxful’s customer base.
In addition to Lana, Dmitry Moiseev also joined the Paxful team as Information Security Manager. Dmitry has over 12 years of experience in Information Security and is an expert in high-risk personal data security in the financial sector. Prior to joining Paxful, he was an Information and Security Manager at Western Union.
“We take compliance and security very seriously here at Paxful. We’re hoping that these and other upcoming changes will help our customers understand the importance of regulation and compliance when it comes to operating on a peer-to-peer finance marketplace,” said Lana Schwartzman, Chief Compliance Officer at Paxful. “Paxful now reaches over 2 million people worldwide through our P2P trading platform. When operating at such great numbers dedication to strong security measures that align with a future goal of enhanced oversight and compliance, will provide a better customer experience by affording a greater degree of trust and transparency for all customers”.
Adedapo Adesanya 
Dipo Olowookere