6lock is a payments platform that helps private equity firms send and transfer funds more securely than with standard wire procedures. The platform leverages a variety of overlapping security measures — robust two-factor authorization (2FA), roles-based authorization, identity validation, continuous monitoring, secure PII storage, and attestation — to provide firms with a clear picture of both the senders and recipients involved in each transaction. The result: secured and compliant transactions.
Problem: 6lock wanted to offer private equity clients secured and efficient end-to-end transactions in an invitation-only, closed-loop platform
Private equity firms and other large financial institutions handle a lot of money, which in practice means transferring funds between accounts, portfolio companies, funds, limited partners, service providers, and more.
Traditionally, many of the steps involved in these transfers were manual and inefficient. Firms relied on phone calls and emails to send and verify key pieces of information — which lived in spreadsheets and PDFs — before initiating a wire transfer and to confirm receipt of funds.
“Companies that handle a lot of money typically have a pretty big target on their backs when it comes to fraud,” says Todd Sorrel, co-founder and CEO of 6lock. “And yet here’s all this private information being slung around and traded between parties. It creates a lot of surface attack areas where fraudsters can come in via spoofing, phishing, man-in-the-middle attacks, etc., grab personally identifiable information (PII), and use it against the people that own it.”
You may be wondering: how big of a problem is this, really? According to the FBI, investment fraud rose 38% from 2022 to 2023, reaching about $4.6 billion. Phishing schemes accounted for more than 298,000 complaints — more than a third of all complaints the bureau received. And the result isn’t just monetary loss, but also reputational damage for affected firms.
“It was kind of a lightbulb-over-our-heads moment when we realized this is a huge problem,” says Todd. “But it doesn’t have to be.”
Some payment service providers try to tackle the challenge of wire fraud by securely sharing wiring information, but this is just one small part of the process. 6lock wanted to provide a truly end-to-end solution capable of securely handling a transfer from the moment it’s initiated until it is received.
“We wanted 6lock to be a product that could serve both parties involved in a transaction, adding value through a layer of security,” says Todd. “We wanted to help our users be able to say, ‘Yes, I know this company — we do business with each other and I’m comfortable sending my funds to them.’”
Solution: 6lock partners with Persona to embed identity verification directly within its platform to enable secured transactions for the first time
To tackle the complexities of secure, compliant fund transfers, 6lock knew it wanted to incorporate identity verification into the process. Leveraging its expertise in the security space, 6lock took stock of the different options on the market and ultimately chose to integrate Persona for a number of reasons.
Automated KYC and KYB
6lock initially began its search knowing it wanted to be able to provide KYC services to its customers — essentially performing KYC on its clients’ clients. But because it serves businesses, 6lock itself is also subject to Know Your Business (KYB) regulations. The fact that Persona could address both needs within a single platform was a big consideration.
“When we started looking at Persona, it was for the KYC piece of the puzzle,” says Todd. “But the fact that Persona does KYB in addition to KYC was attractive. Being able to go with one supplier for both needs instead of piecing together multiple solutions made a lot of sense, especially when you consider how difficult KYB can be to solve.”
Today, 6lock leverages Persona’s government ID verification and selfie checks for KYC, typically during onboarding and before a transaction is completed. This final reverification prior to payout offers a significant additional layer of security against fraud.
“This is especially important to us as AI continues to evolve,” says Peter Steppe, Chief Security Officer at 6lock. “In the past, when a client needed to transfer funds, they might have picked up the phone and called the recipient for verification. But today, with voice deepfakes and the like, there’s less confidence in relying on a voice. We needed something that could provide high assurance without being overly burdensome.”
On the KYB front, 6lock leverages a number of different business checks — including ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) verification — to help its customers comply with regulations.
Depth of KYC
At the end of the day, when 6lock performs KYC and KYB on its clients (and their clients), it’s doing so to reduce fraud. That meant it couldn’t just choose any IDV solution; it needed one that it could believe in confidently.
“When you think about how Persona verifies government IDs and selfies, it gives you peace of mind,” says Todd. “It’s not only the different checks that the solution performs, but the contextual data you’re using to analyze and understand the images against. When you combine them all together, it starts to paint a picture of the individual that provides a higher level of due diligence.”
While government ID and selfie verification form the base of 6lock’s verification approach, that doesn’t form the entirety of its strategy. It also uses Persona to regularly collect other risk signals for additional context.
“We’re required to perform OFAC checks on a recurring basis to meet the continuous monitoring requirement of KYC,” says Peter. “Being able to automate some of those workflows for verification and reverification was an important consideration for us.”
Streamlined UX
Persona’s streamlined user experience was also a key selling point for 6lock, especially compared to the less intuitive and more cumbersome forms of data collection and verification that are so common in the industry. Specifically, 6lock was looking for functionalities that could streamline verification to keep user drop-offs low.
“Allowing a person to seamlessly transfer their IDV session from desktop to mobile without starting the whole process over and allowing them to hold their driver’s license up to the camera for verification — that’s what we were looking for,” says Peter.
Todd notes that the intuitive nature of Persona has been a success not just with 6lock’s clients, but all users of the platform, ranging from young to older. “Overall, the more intuitive and aesthetically pleasing, the better it is for the person going through the process,” he says. “Persona delivered on that.”
Implementation partnership and guidance
6lock wasn’t just impressed with Persona’s product — it was also pleased with the level of partnership, guidance, and support, which was especially important during implementation.
“Persona is highly customizable, and it’s got a lot of powerful capabilities,” says Peter. “But verification flows aren’t the easiest thing in the world to set up. Having assistance from the Persona team has been very helpful in getting the configuration right for our setup.”
And the partnership didn’t stop after implementation.
“Support has been amazing,” says Peter. “The team has been really responsive and has helped us do things in the product that I’m not sure we could have done ourselves. Any time we asked questions, Persona always came back with good answers. We could tell they were willing to work with us to help us get this right.”
Results: 6lock facilitates high-value transactions with next-level security and a chain of trust.
When incorporating identity verification into its platform, 6lock knew that in order to get buy-in from clients, verifications couldn’t take too long or users would likely drop off. The company has been pleased with its results so far: keeping verifications under 4 minutes while providing 6lock clients the ability to transact securely.
“That’s been a key for us: being able to do this quickly,” says Peter. “And because it doesn’t rely on shuffling personally identifiable information (PII) around via email or through the phone, we greatly reduce the attack surface for fraud. That’s mission-critical. It’s a high value-add for our customers.”
As 6lock continues to process more of these transactions for a greater variety of clients, 6lock looks forward to fine-tuning the IDV piece of the puzzle with Persona by lowering time-to-verification and finding new ways to further reduce risk with verifications and reverification.
