Mati is an ID verification tool that helps companies onboard their users with a layer of trust and security attached. Whether you’re a startup that has to perform KYC/AML checks on all users, or an established sharing-economy company that wants a higher level of safety and trust, you can now automate this process using our simple 10min integration.
I was so excited to meet Mati’s founders last week. As a user, I know the long “upload your ID” flows they replace, and as a maker, I’m inspired by what I could do in a weekend with even their free tier. Even though there's a lot of tech under the hood, I love the focus of making it beautiful, simple, and fast for both the makers and end-users. @filipvictor, can you talk about the origin story of Mati/the team's vision? And can you share some of the cool use cases you’ve seen from makers in the last year?
@staringispolite thanks for hunting us! I started mati 2 years ago because I became fascinated with the concept of identity, how its underlying infrastructure still has not moved online - and what we can enable once we port it online. I was an immigrant as a kid, from Poland to England, and finally the US, and I’ve had problems doing simple things like signing apartment leases, obtaining a credit card, or even renting a car at the airport.
I realized that these "identity issues" are not unique to immigrants and are widespread even in highly developed countries like the US. 50% in the US alone are shut out of mainstream banking due to thin credit file or incorrectly represented credit worthiness. This reaches 90% in the developing world. We decided to tackle account opening first - bank account opening, buying cryptocurrency, signing up to work for uber, hosting people on airbnb, or asking a new fintech for a loan. All those situations require an ID verification step, which is often super frustrating to do for users, and very costly for companies. Mati makes it 5-10x cheaper, takes 10 minutes to integrate as a maker, and we believe is the fastest and easiest user experience in the space.
As for use cases, some of my favorites are a client that gives out loans to people who “don’t exist” in the credit bureaus and a bus startup that verifies your fellow passengers like ride-share does drivers. In places like Mexico, even regular e-commerce companies use mati, because otherwise, fraud would put them out of business. We opened an office in LatAm for this reason - a lot of normal services we take for granted, like car sharing, or coworking, are very difficult to get off the ground elsewhere in the world.
I’m super excited to see what the PH community will do with this tool. That’s why we give away 1,000 verifications/month in our free tier, to really see what people will do when integrating trust/verification is so quick & inexpensive that it even makes sense for a weekend project. (If you have ideas or build something, let me know here or on twitter!)
@filipvictor The overnight bus example is one that stuck with me. If I'm sleeping around complete strangers, I'd totally want them to be verified the way ride-share drivers or other sharing economy people are. I guess I'd just never thought that could scale, so I never thought of it as a possible feature? That's what really got me thinking what else can be possible now that apps can integrate this stuff 10x more cheaply/quickly? You mentioned the developing world, and I think entire new product categories as well.
@staringispolite absolutely!
If you think about companies like airbnb or uber, they require a lot of implied trust, which these companies usually build for years before their service takes off - and only in developed, relatively safe places. Most places just don’t have the trust built in by default like SF does. With a "trust plugin" like mati, you can build something completely new that wasn’t possible before. We heard so many ideas in the past year, but here’s a few i remember from our latam office:
- real user tinder
- airbnb for food, in people’s houses
- no commission craigslist for p2p services
- product barter - i.e. an exchange platform
- p2p rental platform to make money on stuff like bikes and projectors laying around
- uber for children (i guess instead of calling a cab for children to go to school or airport)
wow this is very cool! I can see something like this becoming ubiquitous in the e-com space. For example, I am sure Amazon and Shopify could use something like this to verify new sellers opening up a business on their platform. There are so many scams these days.. it would help sanitize the industry. I will be keeping up with your progress. Congrats on the launch!
@toniena_ thank you!! we actually launched in ecommerce for that reason. We even opened an office in Mexico because of that - they have the highest online e-commerce fraud in the world so we thought if we can prove out our product there, it will work anywhere. The plan is to make verifying yourself online as simple as login with facebook. Then we can give it out to everyone, drop the price, and see if we can help help with fraud and help makers create digital services that build communities with built-in trust.
@filipvictor that makes sense! I think it would certainly improve people's experience online. We need more companies like yours with a big vision for what the internet can become :) Good luck!
La verificacion de la identidad es tan importante por que asi sabes o confirmas que los clientes son quienes dicen ser, es por esto la importancia de esta herramienta.
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