Shufti Pro’s Role in Securing Safe Cryptocurrency Transactions: A Conversation with Shufti Pro Co-Founder Shahid Hanif

According to the study, the cryptocurrency market has witnessed remarkable growth with high-profile potential, reaching approximately USD 40.7 billion in 2023, with its size increasing by 11.98% year-on-year to over USD 1.66 trillion. In addition to growth, wherever an industry is booming, scammers tend to find ways to infiltrate that market, and cryptocurrencies are no exception. Time Magazine reported that people lose over $1 billion every year to cryptocurrency scammers.

Cryptocurrency companies are finding ways to protect their customers from the growing threat of fraudsters through a variety of strategies, including KYC processes. It’s like a security firewall that blocks out all the wrong people and allows only genuine consumers to use the service.

Shufty Pro is one of the companies that provides KYC services to small and medium-sized businesses and enterprises, and is specifically one of the companies working in the blockchain industry. Today we have the CTO of Shufti Pro. Shahid Hanif, he is also the co-founder of this company. We will ask him questions about the cryptocurrency market and how his organization creates a safe business environment within the industry.

Hello Shahid, welcome to this interview. To start the interview, please provide some background on Shufti Pro and your role in the cryptocurrency industry.

Hello, thank you for inviting me. Shufti Pro is an all-in-one KYC service provider that provides everything businesses need to protect their operations from fraudsters. We offer a complete suite of user authentication products, including facial authentication, 2FA, video KYC, NFC authentication, and most recently e-IDV, helping businesses operate in the digital world with confidence and trust.

Our customers are primarily small and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises seeking customer identity authentication solutions to comply with global regulations.

Especially for cryptocurrencies, where online fraud is most common, multi-factor authentication checks, including 2FA, facial authentication, and persistent anti-fraud algorithms can help merchants avoid falling victim to scammers and detect fraudulent entities in the field.

In the introduction, we mentioned that the cost of cryptocurrency fraud is over $1 billion, up almost 12% year-on-year. Why do you think cryptocurrency fraud is on the rise when fraud prevention and KYC services like Shufti Pro already exist in the market? Why can’t the market control these scammers?

The main reason for this is the lack of awareness among business owners, which gives an advantage to fraudsters. Many companies work in the cryptocurrency space but do not conduct security checks on their customer portals, login and onboarding pages. Of course, it’s like giving an invitation to a scammer.

Second, many companies are still using weak KYC, which does not provide security against evolving cyberattack threats, including generative AI and deepfakes. They use outdated KYC and ID verification that can be fooled by artificial intelligence manipulation.

Business owners should be wary of identity verification service providers that cannot provide robust protection against AI-enabled attacks. These attacks represent a new frontier for cyber fraud, so it’s important to choose a provider with advanced security measures.

You mentioned that business owners should choose KYC and IDV service providers that provide protection against evolving cyber threats. Can you explain whether your company offers protection against modern attacks? If so, please explain.

Of course, Shufti Pro protects you from all kinds of modern online scams. We constantly update our platform, monitor fraud trends and monitor the latest strategies used by scammers.

AI is the latest technology cyberbullies are using to commit fraud. To be more precise, it uses deepfake technology to imitate a real human face through CGI. This is to trick the facial authentication system into thinking it is a real entity.

However, Shufti Pro is one of the few ID verification providers that can stop scammers. Our platform uses state-of-the-art strategies to detect deception. We integrate depth sensing technology to identify the Z-axis of the image. Because deepfakes are 2D flat images, whereas real faces represent 3D dimensions, this approach allows deepfake attempts to be immediately judged and detected.

An effective KYC suite leveraging selfie and document verification allows businesses to not only onboard legitimate users/customers, but also conduct continuous monitoring to prevent fraud. Our 2FA system also allows businesses to protect their customers’ data in the event of account takeover fraud. Additionally, Shufti Pro offers a variety of security solutions including video KYC, AML screening, e-IDV and NFC verification.

All these solutions make the company an ideal choice for companies in the cryptocurrency space looking to secure their services.

Can you tell us about the milestones and achievements of Shufti Pro since its launch?

Within 6 years, Shufti Pro has achieved significant growth and received much recognition from small and medium-sized businesses, corporations, and other large corporations. During this time, we have worked with more than 1,000 businesses to combat fraud and help them comply with global regulations. Additionally, the company has launched more than 17 IDV products and has won several awards from several publications in various categories. The most recent is “Best Client Onboarding Solution” based on UF AWARDS 2022. We are one of the few KYC providers that offers fully automated AI-based IDV and KYC products, including selfie verification, e-IDV, 2FA and authentication. Beyond that there is absolutely no human interaction. Going forward, Shufti Pro will focus on launching better IDV products for the world to combat evolving cyber fraud threats.

What do you think about the future of blockchain, especially cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrencies facilitated by blockchain technology offer decentralized currencies that are globally accepted, less liquid, and have increased transparency without the need for specific regulators. This gives digital currencies an edge over traditional currencies where a specific entity controls the platform and money.

However, every revolution comes with a price, and cryptocurrency is no exception. The absence of regulators and control authorities allows fraudsters to carry out their fraud more efficiently than before. Therefore, businesses and customers must implement robust security measures and firewalls to mitigate these threats in the future.

Also Read: Ant Group CEO Eric Jing Highlights Privacy-Preserving Computing, AI and DLT in Shaping the Future of Finance