90%

improvement in end-to-end automation

for a more seamless ‘straight-through processing’ experience for customers
50%+

of investors approved within five minutes

powered by Onfido’s AI-driven verification technology

The challenge

Gotrade are building an investment world without borders or barriers. Their goal is to make investing accessible for those around the world who have been traditionally excluded. Starting with a mobile-first experience, Gotrade are enabling access to US equities for their global customer base of over 100,000 investors.

As a licensed financial institution, Gotrade must comply with KYC/AML regulations to protect both their customers and their business. This requires Gotrade to verify the identities of customers signing up to the investment platform, including confirming that a customer is genuine, and not a Politically Exposed Person or listed on a Sanctions watchlist.

Gotrade wanted to address these needs with two key points in mind. Gotrade are a mobile-only business, and wanted to ensure that they could seamlessly verify customers without the need for in-person calls. And with ambitious growth aims, Gotrade must ensure that they can scale onboarding without putting strain on their internal operations team. For Lex, Head of Marketing at Gotrade, “if we were manually reviewing each customer, that would put a bottleneck on our growth”.

Faced with satisfying strict compliance needs without compromising on customer experience and internal bandwidth, Gotrade turned to Onfido to help them seamless and securely verify customer identities.

The solution

Gotrade partnered with Onfido to verify new investors with a mobile-first experience, powered by Onfido’s Document, Selfie, and Watchlist Check services. Before new Gotrade customers can start trading, they are asked to take a quick capture of their ID and a Selfie on their phone.

Gotrade looked for a solution that could deliver fast and accurate verification results, and could scale to support high volumes as Gotrade rapidly grew their customer base. Onfido ticked all these boxes, and the results are clear to see for both Gotrade and their investor base.

We trust Onfido’s verification results, and can now automate account opening end-to-end. If we were manually reviewing each customer, that would put a bottleneck on our growth. Onfido helps us ‘straight-through process’ new account openings, providing a great first impression for new investors.

Lex van Lynden Head of Marketing, Gotrade

The results

Gotrade is focused on removing barriers to investment for their community of investors, and doing so in a way that is compliant. With Onfido, Gotrade is confident that they’re providing a smoother first impression for investors, without compromising on compliance.

For customers new to mobile-first investment experiences, first impressions count. With Onfido, Gotrade are able to take over 50% of customers from ‘unknown’ to ‘verified’ and active in under five minutes. Using Onfido’s off-the-shelf mobile SDKs across iOS and Android, Gotrade have built an identity verification UX that seamlessly guides customers through taking a photo of their Document and a Selfie, and have taken the innovative approach of rewarding customers step-by-step at each stage of the KYC process.

Gotrade measure the success of their Onfido integration based on how many customers they can onboard, and how much they can automate this process. For Lex at Gotrade, this is essential to business growth: “We trust Onfido’s verification results, and can now automate account opening end-to-end!” With Onfido’s AI-driven Document and Biometric verification, Gotrade have improved straight-through processing for new account openings by over 50%.

As Gotrade onboard an increasingly global community, they can rely on Onfido to support their scale. Onfido supports documents from around the world, so Gotrade are confident that they can verify new investors from over 150 countries. Fresh from a fundraise, Gotrade is rapidly expanding their customer base globally. With Onfido, they’re all set for a compliant and secure growth experience. Find out more at heygotrade.com.

About Gotrade

Gotrade are building an investment world without borders, barriers, or minimums. Founded in 2019, and with over 100,000 investors in 150 countries today, Gotrade is enabling commission-free trading to the masses from as little as $1.