FinTech Synapse Eyes expands to India, LatAm

US FinTech Synapse, which provides US checking accounts to foreign clients, is close to 1 million Brazilian accounts and will look to expand to other countries in Latin America and India.

Synapse allows customers to open accounts through Synapse partners in their home country. The company has also recently partnered with Nomad, a Brazilian FinTech. It also provides US accounts to customers of Banco Inter SA, Reuters wrote.

The accounts have typically been used by Brazilians to pay for expenses during travel or to invest in US financial markets.

CEO Sankaet Pathak has said that one of the main reasons clients are opening US accounts has been to transfer assets from volatile local currencies to dollar investments.

Speaking to PYMNTS recently about the challenges of onboarding, Pathak said the hardest parts involve determining the likelihood of identity theft.

Read more: How Synapse ensures a smooth and secure authentication experience via behavioral analysis

User authentication has become more important with an increase in identity theft in business. Businesses’ task of proving that customers are who they say they are has been a “significant challenge”, and customers can walk away if things get too complicated.

“When it comes to onboarding, the most important thing [determining] the likelihood of identity theft … while having a very streamlined and easy onboarding process,” Pathak said. “You want to be able to ask the customer for as little information as possible while still being able to make the assessment you need.”

The goals may not seem aligned, but Pathak said the company uses behavioral analytics to ensure it’s a secure, seamless authentication experience.

Onboarding is the step with the greatest potential for an identity fraudster to infiltrate the company’s system, and that step is also the foundation of the entire relationship.

“The first step is to verify someone’s identity and make sure you have that high sense of security [about it] as you can,” said Pathak. “You have to run them through all the sanctions screenings, tests and blacklists, and then board them [smoothly] and enable payment processing.”

New PYMNTS study: How consumers use digital banks

A PYMNTS survey of 2,124 US consumers shows that while two-thirds of consumers have used FinTechs for some aspect of banking, only 9.3% call them their primary bank.