Digital Identity, eKYC, and Strong Customer Authentication
Orchestrating Flows Across Multiple Providers
Digital identity is now the backbone of modern financial services. From onboarding and payments to account recovery and high-risk transactions, trust must be established continuously, not just once. Banks and fintechs rarely rely on a single identity or compliance provider anymore. Instead, they orchestrate multiple eKYC, AML, identity verification, and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) services across different geographies, risk levels, and use cases.
While this improves coverage and resilience, it introduces a significant engineering challenge: how to orchestrate complex identity flows reliably, securely, and audibly at scale.
This article explores the architectural patterns behind modern digital identity platforms and how banks can design systems that handle variability, fallbacks, and regulatory scrutiny without breaking user experience.
Why Identity Has Become an Orchestration Problem
No single provider solves identity verification perfectly. Coverage varies by country, document type, biometric quality, and regulatory interpretation. As a result, most institutions integrate multiple providers for:
- document and biometric verification
- sanctions and AML screening
- liveness and fraud checks
- device and behavioral signals
- step-up authentication and SCA
The challenge is no longer how to integrate a provider, but how to coordinate many of them within a single, coherent flow.
Each onboarding or authentication journey becomes a dynamic process rather than a linear checklist.
Engineering eKYC and AML as Modular Flows
Modern identity platforms treat verification steps as composable building blocks rather than hard-coded sequences. A typical onboarding journey might involve document capture, biometric checks, AML screening, and risk scoring—but the exact order and providers used may vary.
Architecturally, this is best modeled as a workflow, not a service call. Workflow engines or orchestration layers coordinate: which provider to call, what data to pass, how to evaluate results, when to retry, fallback, or escalate, how to log decisions for audit. This approach allows identity flows to adapt to new regulations, providers, or fraud patterns without rewriting core logic.
Strong Customer Authentication as a State Machine
SCA is often implemented too rigidly, resulting in poor user experience or unnecessary friction. In reality, SCA should be risk-driven and contextual.
From an engineering perspective, SCA flows behave like state machines. Depending on transaction risk, user behavior, and regulatory requirements, the system may: allow frictionless authentication, trigger OTP or push-based verification, request biometric confirmation, escalate to manual review. Designing SCA as an orchestrated flow allows platforms to introduce progressive authentication instead of blanket enforcement.
Handling Fallbacks, Exceptions, and Provider Failures
Identity systems must expect failure—not as an exception, but as a normal condition. Providers can be unavailable, responses can be inconclusive, documents can be unreadable, and users can abandon flows.
Robust orchestration layers handle this by:
- defining fallback providers per verification step
- supporting partial success and manual review paths
- implementing retries with backoff
- preserving state across sessions and devices
This ensures onboarding and authentication remain resilient even when individual components fail.
Auditability and Compliance by Design
Identity and authentication systems operate under intense regulatory scrutiny. Every decision—automatic or manual—must be explainable after the fact.
Event-driven orchestration helps here. Each step emits structured events that record: inputs and outputs, provider decisions, timestamps and correlation IDs, risk evaluations, final outcomes. This creates an immutable audit trail that supports compliance reviews, dispute resolution, and internal investigations—without impacting live flows.
Decoupling Identity from Core Banking Systems
One common architectural mistake is embedding identity logic directly into core services. This creates tight coupling, slows change, and increases risk.
Instead, modern platforms isolate identity orchestration into a dedicated layer that communicates via APIs and events. Core systems consume decisions, not raw identity signals.
This separation enables: independent scaling of identity workloads, faster provider onboarding, safer experimentation with new verification methods, clearer security boundaries.
Security and Privacy Across Identity Flows
Because identity data is highly sensitive, orchestration platforms must enforce strict security controls:
- encryption of documents and biometrics
- tokenization of personal identifiers
- role-based access to verification data
- strict data retention policies
- consent-aware processing
Privacy is not a feature—it is an architectural constraint that shapes how identity systems are designed.
How OceanoBe Helps Build Identity Orchestration Platforms
OceanoBe works with banks and fintechs to engineer identity and trust platforms that scale across providers, regulations, and markets.
Our teams help design and implement:
API-driven orchestration layers
workflow engines for eKYC and SCA
resilient multi-provider integrations
event-driven audit and monitoring pipelines
secure data handling for sensitive identity information
We focus on turning fragmented identity integrations into cohesive, reliable platforms that support growth without compromising compliance.
Conclusion: Trust Is an Engineered Capability
Digital identity, eKYC, and SCA are no longer isolated checks—they are continuous, orchestrated processes that define customer trust. Banks that succeed treat identity as a platform capability, not a provider integration. With the right orchestration patterns, workflow engines, and secure integration layers, institutions can deliver compliant, resilient, and user-friendly identity journeys—ready for the next generation of digital finance.
