Tradle

As shown by e-Estonia, Digital Identity can be a platform for public and commercial services, digitizing the whole economy. In COVID world digital often becomes the only way to survive, yet no country today has managed to replicate Estonia's depth of digitization. Tradle used a trifecta of AI, blockchain and cloud to improve e-Estonia’s portability and received LOI from Estonia’s government entity to help other countries implement Tradle-based market infrastructure with Estonian principles at the core.

The key is to start bottom-up, not top-down, using eKYC as a way to penetrate the market, and gradually fund the projects.  KYC/AMl is a high priority for all countries, and does not require big government budgets and decade-long public sector commitments to launch and execute as is paid by banks. AI, blockchain and cloud make eKYC identities programmable, enhanceable to any level of government-issued identity and supervisable by the regulators and government.

https://docs.google.com/presen...

Over 80% of government digital identity projects fail. Most centralized KYC utilities have failed. Yet the World Bank has found success in establishing Credit Bureaus in over 120 countries and Tradle builds on that success by helping credit bureaus become digitization catalysts.

Tradle developed a unique methodology that allows the network of entities to emerge from the bottom up by guaranteeing significant economic benefits even for one standalone entity (bank, insurer, government entity, telcom, utility) and further increase benefits with future network effects. 

Each entity gains reduction of costs and manual labor and a CRM for increased upsell and cross-sell. For governments it reduces corruption via self-executing policies for services, by reducing human judgement and leaving blockchain-based audit trails, with nowhere to hide.

For individuals and SMEs it gives identity-enabled Transactional Messaging for financial and e-government inclusion, opening a direct subsidies and relief channel for COVID. 

Tradle is building a global network. In many countries due to migration, wars, economic disparity, and due to globalization, the need to identify people and entities from other countries is paramount. Tradle is part of GFIN, a global network of over 60 regulators, where Tradle is working on cross-border digital policies.

The solution serves the banks, insurers, telcos and government entities for onboarding and managing clients. The solution is uniquely incremental, and risk adjusted. 

Tradle’s unique adaptation capability is based on self-executing digital policies that interact with people via Tradle’s Transactional Messaging app, both on mobile and the web. These policies gradually collect and verify necessary details, specific to a financial product or a service, type of client and jurisdictional requirements. This allows institutions to accept individuals, and MSMEs that they could not previously accept, expanding inclusion. For example, one of our engagements is a direct-to-bank social benefits program for 32M unbanked. 

Incremental establishment of a variety of identity attributes from multitude of sources, with the help of AI digitizing those sources, and with the help of trusted human verifiers, confirming those sources. Cross-checking between sources based on rules and anti-fraud AI, makes the system self-healing and gradually but steadily improving. 

A blockchain-based audit trail for all decision-making allows to create trust and stability in economic and regulatory decision making.

Tradle’s solution gives citizens and MSMEs custody of their identity profiles, which increases economic freedom via portability between service providers, while ensuring privacy that is higher than world-leading EU GDPR.

Tradle offers a self-service smartphone app and a feature phone mode where identity of the bearer is established with the smartphone of the agent (government official, banker, mobile money agent, etc.)

Tradle also offers unique identity sponsorship for family members, community leaders, teachers and employers to confirm identity and non-machine-readable documents (birth certificate, utility bill, etc.)

For servicing entities Tradle offers a MyCloud instance, auto-managed by a cloud provider. Clients and agents’ phones connect to MyCloud with  biometric identification. Tradle is extending MyCloud to give every citizen without a personal phone a Personal Cloud, with data store, AI, and compute.

Many existing identity providers like Jumio aggregate the data from the clients of the banks they service. This is a cybersecurity risk that can be avoided with new technology. We have seen Equifax in the US hacked and the intimate details of 145 million Americans stolen. With state actors suspected to work on such data breaches (https://www.businessinsider.com/doj-china-pla-military-hackers-indicted-equifax-2017-breach-2020-2 ), how is the developing country to protect itself if the US can not?

A simple answer is - never put all your eggs in one basket, and this is what Tradle achieves with the decentralization based on blockchain technology.

A better answer is - banks should never give their vendors access to their customers’ data. Here is the list of Tradle’s other competitive advantages:

1. WhatsApp-like Transactional Messaging interface makes is much simpler to use for the less educated population 

2. Digital Policies create a unique adaptation mechanism that was tested to adjust perfectly to unbanked, simple finance, and more complex loan and insurance scenarios and all the way to multi-jurisdictional multi-subsidiary entities with multiple beneficiaries and controllers.

3. Blockchain protects the integrity of all the data collected, and records of verifications and approval decisions made by AI, workflow rules and people

4. Localization with support for all major world languages, currencies, numbers and date formats

5. Coverage for most government issued IDs in the worldwide 

6. Coverage for most of government business registries 

7. An open architecture that allows pluggable innovations from hundreds of fintechs to use Tradle as a distribution channel

Tradle succeeded in projects with leading banks and insurance companies including Lloyds Bank, Rabobank, Santander and Aviva. UBS received 2 industry awards for a project with Tradle. We received the best vendor award for integrating with Finastra core banking system, partnered with R3 for Corda consortium / private blockchain, as well as proved EU-level privacy even when using public blockchains. The technology and our business has participated in regulatory programs such as Regulatory Sandbox by FCA (UK) and a similar program by MAS (SG) and has been vetted by over 20 regulators, while collaborating with multilaterals, the World Bank, IADB and ADB.

Tradle was invited to present its innovation to FATF Plenary sessions in Vienna two years in the row 

Tradle has won the best Blockchain Fintech in Europe and Best Fintech in Japan, as well as numerous awards by KPMG, Citi and others. 

Tradle has just been announced as a founding alliance member of the LACChain blockchain initiative by IADB to implement identity solutions for LATAM and Caribbean.

See our recognition section on our webpage here

In COVID-19 some economic activities have moved online almost instantly, using Zoom, some required emergency legislation, like telemedicine, and many have stopped or got postponed. What is clear today is that we do not have a good system for commerce and trade digitally. This is true for both the developed and developing world. 

Our transition to digital trade could be superficial, using SMS, email, Zoom and DocuSign or could be transformative to achieve higher productivity and GDP growth acceleration. 

Messengers like WhatsApp have evolved in the past decade and people, but they are not made for trade. This is the reason we built Tradle.

Examples of what Messengers can’t do:

Can’t prove virus-free certificate, can’t prove tested-positive and quarantine ended, etc. Can’t remotely establish a doctor-patient relationship Can’t get a prescription from doctor in one chat channel and forward to pharmacy in another Can’t order, confirm an invoice, record delivery, or share stock level Can’t negotiate and sign a Contract, and be able to defend it in court Can’t register a company and prove to others that it is active and is in  good standing Can’t apply for government services, e.g. get a permit and prove it to others Can’t establish and prove credentialing for licensed professionals (e.g. doctors, builders, CPAs, etc.) Can’t prove educational credentials to an employer (e.g. diplomas and certifications) Can’t get and execute the power of attorney Can’t forward a transaction confirmation from a bank to a supplier Can’t do hundreds of other types of economic transactions

Above cases are all naturally sequential interactions, which need a semantic model and a provable record, and require sharing information between parties. We call this style of communications Transactional Messaging, and it achieves ultimate simplicity, especially important in the developing world.

In China similar innovation exists and it created 26 million jobs in just a few years ( http://www.china.org.cn/business/2020-01/10/content_75598789.htm ). The oligopoly of Google and Apple App Stores did not allow this to emerge outside of China.

Tradle has found a way.

The key realization that we arrived at is that no single solution can address identity space’s complexity, and successful solution needs to work more like a supply chain of different market participants, providing documents, data, verifications, certifications, registries, notarizations, witnessing, as well as the community that all work together to establish a trust system that continuously improves.

For multi-party coordination we employ blockchain, Transactional Messenger, open-source and best of breed integration API like GraphQL and WebHooks.

We continuously search for best-of-breed vendors with capabilities, unimaginable a couple of years ago, such as passive behavioral analytics to prevent account takeover, passive liveness detection, NIST certified for 100% accuracy, and open source face matching that defies concerns of the bias against marginalized groups. 

We have also integrated dozens of public and commercial data sources. And because the system is open, the integrations can be developed by institutions themselves and their integration partners. 

Identification systems we have successfully integrated into include:

1. Read on mobiles and the web most of worldwide government issued ID documents, both older versions issued years ago, and newer issues

2. Biometric ID documents with government-signed data biometric data elements

3. Credit bureaus in 3 countries with identity profiles 

4. Government registries, voter registers, identity cards registries, company registrations and financial statements, company beneficiaries, registrations of financial institutions with the regulators, with tax authorities, with public exchanges and markets, data from governments’ justice departments, etc. etc.

5. We are adding Single Sign On identification used in banks

Tradle’s open platform enables organisations to build solutions from models with no need to touch server, database, UI or web code. This step change in development means organisations can respond extremely rapidly to changing requirements. For example, Tradle was used to build complete end-to-end Covid response apps for eKYC, health tracking, Covid test requests, prescription requests and food pack distribution virtually overnight. The simple modelling and plugin capabilities mean the organisation can respond to changes in regulation or compliance without the typical protracted approval and development cycles of today.

Tradle is a native serverless cloud solution, meaning it requires virtually zero technical maintenance or support. It can be launched by an organisation in its standard form within minutes complete with the organisation’s branding, colours and text. Customised eKYC policies to suit their risk and compliance requirements can be created and deployed usually within days.

Tradle was built as an open API platform. The GraphQL API enables infinite extensibility of data that can be stored and accessed using mature standard methods. All data is accessible and managed by the institution or organisation which is providing services to the individuals. No data is ever accessible by Tradle at rest or in transit.

Tradle’s mobile applications were designed for intermittent connectivity situations enabling the customer to continue their user journey while their network connection is down and reconnect without user intervention in the background. 

Our Transactional Messenger UI dramatically lowers the cognitive barrier needed for interacting with digital systems making tasks like complex form filling a simple conversation in the customer’s native language. The dynamically adjusted user journey only asks the customer for relevant information at that point, reducing the possibility of user errors or misunderstandings.

Currently engaged to serve up to 5,000,000

2021 - 10,000,000

2026 - 500,000,000

We have the goal of being a global KYC solution for all types of people, all types of organisations and all types of onboarding. To do this we needed a universal platform which could cater for any nations regulatory requirements and any businesses KYC policy and procedures for individuals and complex corporate structures. We wanted to enable remote onboarding from day one, for speed, efficiency, an increasingly borderless global workforce and now for the critical need to socially distance. 

Our use of cloud together with our unique modelling solution means the platform can be deployed rapidly and easily by any business. Our use of AI to aid the user and detect fraud and our blockchain technology for simply storing proof are key. It means the owner of the verified information can share it anywhere on the planet with any organisation with no intermediary or centralised storage of highly sensitive data which are the constant target of hackers.

Our continual engagement with regulators, development banks, central banks and regional delivery partners means we are well positioned to grow in every continent. Our technology is infinitely scalable, automatically and can be deployed extremely quickly requiring very limited support by the organisation or from Tradle.

Our open source platform enables others to rapidly start new businesses with a foundation of digital identity.

1. High jurisdictional variability of Financial Grade identity laws (KYC/AML) 

2. Lack of digital signature laws 

3. High cost of biometric identification AI technology

4. Low throughput and cost of public blockchain technology

5. Data Residency / Sovereignty 

6. Smartphone penetration 

7. Low quality smartphones

8. Bad Internet connectivity 

9. Literacy and Digital literacy 

10. Many Languages

11. Lack of access to government registries for verifications

1. Jurisdictional variability Our digital policy creation tools allow us to digitize any regulatory and legal requirements.

2. Lack of digital signatures We implemented signature-on-screen biometric ISO 19794-7:2014 standard and are looking to develop AI models for auto-matching. We also developed a 10-point argument to regulators to educate them on the efficacy of this method, in combination with blockchain seals and cryptographic signatures.

3. High cost of AI We developed a pluggable platform to alternative AI components and are recruiting open source AI developers to create royalty-free models.

4. Blockchain limitations We developed an adaptive mechanism with real-time recording in databases and eventual propagation to blockchain. We developed a batching scheme to reduce cost.

5. Data Residency 1. We give individuals a way to own and move data cross-border, when banks can’t 2. As AWS lacks data centers in each country, we devised Light Cloud over local Data Centers.

6. Low smartphone penetration For feature phones we developed an agent-assisted mode and a unique Personal Cloud offering (to be sold through Telcos) to shift processing to cloud compute, storage and AI.

7. Low quality smartphones We optimized Tradle app for low memory, low resolution cameras

8. Bad Internet Our app works with occasional and low bandwidth connectivity 

9. Literacy and Digital literacy Our WhatsApp-like interface dramatically lowers levels of literacy and digital skills needed

10. Languages Our automatic translation supports over 100 languages

11. Lack of registries  We read chips on IDs on top of OCR IDs, MRZ, AI facematching

na

5 full time staff

15 part time staff

Most of our core team are senior developers with 30 years or more of experience in industry leading businesses in the field of finance, logistics, business services and AI. The team have worked together on many projects for over 20 years. We pioneered building complex applications for the semantic web 20 years ago and these concepts are foundational in the Tradle solution today. We have been using cloud technology since their launch and 3 years ago adopted the latest cloud technologies called serverless, removing the need to manage any computer resources (network, storage and compute) with the benefit of automated scaling and industry leading resilience.

We have partnerships in the US, Europe, LATAM, Middle East and Asia.

Our partnerships with world renowned accountancy firms are for regional strategic projects in retail, commercial and development banking.

Our partnerships with global technology partners are for sales support and delivery of Tradle in established markets like Europe and the US and in emerging markets such as LATAM, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Our partnerships with technology providers are to deliver seamlessly integrated solutions in Tradle’s open platform, removing the need for our customers to manage a host of individual vendors.

Our partnerships with consulting firms often start as Tradle being vetted on behalf of a bank and lead to sales opportunities with the consulting firms’ clients.

We simplify the task of customers onboarding with financial institutions (KYC). This means the FI can provide services quicker and the customer can transact sooner. The FIs gain verified, compliant customers faster and with much less effort on both sides. Therefore, Tradle provides automated, compliant and risk adjusted customer onboarding services with less requirement for manual effort by the customer and the FI. This is the value proposition varies in price depending on the complexity of the customer (retail, private, SME or complex corporate).

We have funded the business and all development work primarily through paid projects with major financial institutions. We have also taken minor investments and are currently in the process of investment to scale the business (confidential). 

As we have completed the bulk of development over 4 years our platform is production ready and the business is debt free. 

Our model is similar to a SaaS business where we offer transaction based pricing or a fixed price license. Both options are based on the business size and complexity of their customers (retail, corporate and/or private).

We are in the process of getting an investment from a major multilateral bank

Confidential information

Confidential information

Tradle seeks global exposure with investors, organisations and technology startups wanting to become part of an ecosystem. This award would provide huge exposure to the above plus potential regional partners. It would accelerate the task of engaging with businesses in countries we haven’t yet approached. It will also help with our existing customer relationships and our tech partners by giving them exposure and confirmation that we are a winning solution.

We want partners who can help us scale globally preferably with a deep local understanding. Our partners can help with regional and local culture, regulations and the market. Ideally they would be sales and delivery partners as it creates recurring revenue opportunities for them and does not require significant effort by Tradle as we grow in their regions. So partners with business/technical consulting abilities would be preferential.

We are open and welcome suggestions