A Step-by-step Guide to PAN Card Verification [KYC]

Financial institutions engaged in lending money to customers need to verify the identity of their borrowers to weed out the possibility of fraud. Identity verification, therefore, forms an important component of screening applicants to fulfil the KYC norms stipulated by the government. Identity verification means verifying that the customer is who he/she claims to be. For this verification, institutions require their applicants to submit their KYC documents and an important KYC document is the PAN Card which is a must for many financial transactions. The PAN Card is the most important document for financial transactions, and it is the onus of companies to verify the submitted PAN Cards before they proceed with the transaction. 

Challenges with PAN card verification

Thanks to the advancement of the online medium, nowadays, applicants simply scan and upload their PAN Cards instead of submitting the hard copy. 

Though convenient, this digital submission creates authenticity issues for the institution or organization. Here are some common challenges which institutions face with digitized PAN images -

• The quality of the uploaded PAN Card might be substandard, making it difficult for institutions to extract the required data from them. The image might be hazy, dark, or blurred, which creates problems to decipher it correctly.
• There is no uniformity in the file format shared. Some applicants might simply click a picture of their PAN cards and upload the same as a JPEG image or PDF image.
• The real challenge is also in matching the digital identity of an applicant to his/her real one. Cybercriminals might morph digitized images and details to engage in cyber-frauds.
• Institutions invest a lot of man-hours into the PAN card verification which ultimately reduces the efficiency.
  

Thus, there is a need for a digitized solution for PAN card data extraction and verification which helps institutions overcome these challenges and verify the applicants’ details correctly.

Steps involved in PAN card verification

There are solutions for organizations to verify the PAN card data of their applicants in real-time. Docsumo provides organizations with an Application Programming Interface (API) that helps them detect and weed out document related frauds. Organizations can use Docsumo’s API to verify the PAN Cards submitted by their applicants. Here is the step-by-step guide on how organizations can use Docsumo’s API for PAN card verification:-

Step #1 - Uploading the documents

The first step is to upload the PAN cards received from applicants. Organizations need to collate all the applications received and then upload the received documents into Docsumo’s API in bulk.

Step #2 - Classification of the documents

Once the organization uploads the documents, the rest of the work would be done by Docsumo’s API. The documents would be classified into different categories depending on their type. For example, PAN cards would be grouped in one lot, Aadhaar cards would be grouped in another lot, and so on.

Step #3 - Fraud detection

This is one of the most crucial steps in the entire process. After auto-classification, Docsumo would examine the possibility of any fraud. Fraud checks would be conducted for black and white images, scanned images, cropped images, and a photo of the photo. This detection is done in real-time, and once any possible fraud is detected, the red flag is raised and the document is sent for manual verification. 

Step #4 - Data extraction

Once Docsumo establishes that the uploaded PAN cards are genuine, it would extract the relevant data for the organization. Data like the name of the applicant, PAN card number, father’s or husband’s name, and date of birth would be collated and displayed in a readable format.

Step #5 - Data verification 

Docsumo allows you to manually verify the extracted details for each field. Once reviewed, you can push this data into your system or can download it in excel/csv/json formats. If the model is trained against enough documents, you can enjoy the straight through processing that helps you process the document end-to-end without any human intervention needed.

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PAN card verification is an important step for organizations as it allows them to avoid possible frauds done by dishonest applicants. This saves the organization from making any financial loss and also helps them adhere to the laws laid down by the government. Docsumo provides organizations with an automated PAN verification solution that is easy, convenient, and also quick. Talk to us today, to automate your KYC documents verification workflow!