Helium uses Persona’s comprehensive KYC and KYB tools to deter fraud and compliantly onboard customers and businesses

Helium is a community-powered wireless carrier that offers subscribers a hybrid network. It works by combining nationwide mobile coverage (via its 5G partner T-Mobile) with a people-built network of Hotspots. Subscribers gain access to more affordable and reliable coverage than is typically offered by traditional carriers. Meanwhile, businesses that sign up to operate a Hotspot are rewarded with HNT, Helium’s native token, which can be exchanged for service credits or other rewards. 

Problem: Helium needed to comply with telecom regulations and protect from fraud and abuse while providing free or low-cost coverage to as many people as possible

In the last few decades, traditional mobile network operators have done a good job of extending coverage throughout most of the United States. However, there are still places where coverage doesn’t exist. 

Helium hopes to fill these gaps by combining traditional nationwide coverage with a community-built network of Hotspots. Operated by businesses around the country, who earn crypto rewards for their participation, these Hotspots extend coverage to places where it would otherwise not be available. 

“We believe that connectivity is a right, not a privilege,” says Coco Tang, General Manager of Helium Mobile Subscribers. “Our novel way of creating a network gives us a really great opportunity to aggressively cut the cost of connectivity to zero.”

To that end, the company offers a range of low-cost subscription plans — including its Zero Plan, which offers 3GB of data, 300 texts, and 100 minutes of talk for free. 

Of course, achieving such lofty goals doesn’t come without its challenges. As it operates in the telecom space, Helium must comply with a number of industry regulations. This includes requirements to prevent sanctioned individuals from opening accounts, as well as individuals residing outside the United States or those attempting to circumvent controls in order to game referral bonuses. It also means taking steps to prevent bad actors from using the network to engage in fraud and spam. 

“We have an obligation to make sure our service never gets in the hands of bad actors or people making scam phone calls or trying to spam others,” says Coco. 

At the same time, it was important to consider the other ways fraudsters might try to take advantage of the network, whether that’s subscribers trying to sign up for multiple free plans or businesses trying to game the crypto-mining aspects of running a Hotspot. 

In order to get and stay compliant with industry regulations, prevent fraud, and keep the network as healthy and safe as possible, Helium knew it needed to implement a comprehensive identity verification (IDV) strategy.

Solution: Helium leverages Persona’s identity verification for KYC and KYB 

Helium knew that whatever solution it ultimately chose would need to empower it to verify both sides of the network: subscribers signing up for service and businesses acting as Hotspots. 

The fact that Persona offered both Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) capabilities in a single platform meant that Helium could achieve this without an overly complicated tech stack. Other reasons that Helium ultimately decided to partner with Persona include:

Comprehensive verification capabilities

KYC and KYB strategies should be informed by a number of factors, including the business’s industry, locations, customers, and more. They aren’t one-size-fits-all. Unfortunately, many solutions providers take a cookie-cutter approach to IDV, forcing a single template onto all customers regardless of their specific needs.

Persona’s building-block approach to verifications puts Helium in control. The company was impressed by the variety of verification methods Persona offers, which made it possible to build the verification flows that made the most sense to its unique needs. 

This means that as part of its initial onboarding process, Helium can now proactively gather upstream fraud signals to assess the risk level of each new subscriber. It then uses that score to determine which users require step-up verifications in the form of government ID verification, selfie verification, or business document verification (when onboarding business partners). The result is less intrusive verification for low-risk subscribers — drastically improving the user experience.

Additionally, the ability to layer on additional reports, such as watchlist screenings, politically exposed persons (PEP) screenings, sanctions screenings, and more, gives Helium even greater assurance that it isn’t onboarding risky subscribers or partners it shouldn’t be working with. 

“Being able to tie an individual to their actual identity is important, especially in a field like crypto where there are often many attempts to game the system,” says Marc Nijdam, Chief Technology Officer at Helium. “Persona has been very useful to us in making sure the user is who they say they are.”

Usability and friction control

Identity verification is necessary to keep Helium’s network safe, secure, and compliant — but it also introduces friction to the onboarding flow. Implemented poorly, this might translate into higher dropoffs and fewer sign-ups from legitimate users. Persona’s user-friendly interface and dynamic friction control gives Helium peace of mind that IDV wouldn’t harm the subscriber experience. 

“We tend to really focus on the customer experience,” says Coco. “A lot of our mobile app offering was built with that in mind: It’s there to serve the customer.”

With Persona, Helium is free to adjust how heavy-handed the onboarding flow is, allowing it to implement the minimum amount of friction necessary to achieve its required assurance levels. 

Additionally, other capabilities, like Persona’s autoclassification feature, allow Helium to reduce friction even further without giving up on security. With autoclassification, users are prompted to capture and upload a photo of their ID. Persona then automatically detects the ID type (driver’s license, state ID, passport, etc.) and country of origin based on information found within the ID — removing the need for the user to select those options themselves.

“I don’t want our subscribers to have to make any more decisions beyond what is absolutely necessary, so I’m always looking for ways to cut down on steps,” says Coco. “It may not seem that important, but autoclassification removes two or three clicks for new users. It’s been a real game changer.”

At the same time, Helium’s team found Persona easy to use internally as well, making for a smooth implementation process. 

“You sit with Persona for an hour or so, and you just understand how it all works,” says Coco. “You can tell that somebody with an appreciation for user experience was involved in building the final solution. It wasn’t just driven by engineering.”

Proactive fraud-fighting enhancements

Helium knew that as soon as it implemented IDV during onboarding, bad actors would begin using fake IDs, selfies, business documents, and other assets to try and skirt the KYC and KYB process. At a bare minimum, whatever solution it chose needed to be able to identify and catch these fakes.

“We already had a general idea of what people could do to bypass verification,” says Coco. “But we wanted to make sure the partner we chose was continuously innovating to stay ahead of the potential attack vectors bad actors might use.”

Persona impressed Helium with its track record of adapting to new technologies — seeing the threats posed by tools like generative AI, for example, and proactively incorporating defenses against those attacks. 

Results: With Persona, Helium routinely stops fraudsters from joining the network

After implementing KYC and KYB with Persona, Helium is happy to see the systems working as expected — and that it routinely stops bad actors from gaining access to the network.

“We periodically go through the declines to make sure everyone is being declined for a good reason and legitimate users aren’t being declined by mistake,” says Coco. “It gives us the opportunity to see the kind of stuff Persona has been catching. I’ve seen paper IDs, tampered IDs, IDs displayed on screens, and more. Seeing such a wide variety of declines gives us a lot of confidence that the system is working the way we expected it to.”