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<CEO Youngkyoo Hwang, Alchera>

Alchera(CEO Youngkyoo Hwang), an artificial intelligence (AI) image recognition technology company, secured about 20 new customers in the financial sector this year alone to fulfill the demand for electronic identification e-KYC. Alchera has expanded their scope to the financial market beyond the existing safety fields such as access control, fire detection, and abnormal situation detection.

Alchera announced on the 25th that as they entered the financial market this year, and they supplied their technology to leading financial companies including the first financial sector. Major customers include Kakao Bank and Toss Bank, as well as Shinhan Bank, Kwangju Bank, and Jeonbuk Bank. The company is also expecting additional contracts with other financial companies within the year.

Alchera stands out in the financial sector because the demand for e-KYC has surged since the COVID-19 crisis. In order to prevent illegal transactions such as tax evasion, money laundering, and any funds related to terrorist activity, financial companies are obliged to verify the identity of customers and actual users. With the recent surge in non-face-to-face financial transactions, the e-KYC conversion has progressed rapidly. According to the Financial Supervisory Service, among 22,807,222new accounts,88.7% (20,247,598) of them were opened with non-face-to-face method according to data submitted by Byeongwook Kim, a member of the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee.

e-KYC is a term that refers to the onlineidentification processing of 'KYC (Know Your Customer)'. With the enforcement of the Specific Financial Information Act to prevent money laundering, the obligation to verify identity has expanded to cryptocurrency exchanges, and the demand for e-KYC has risen further. According to Facts & Factors, a global market research company, the e-KYC market is expected to grow to about $1 billion (1.2 trillion KRW) from 2019 to 2026 at a CAGR of 22%.

Alchera is a domestic AI image recognition technology company that performs the entire process from data processing to development.

Since its establishment in 2016, it has been supplying AI technology to various fields such as security, fintech, fire detection, and abnormal situation detection. Currently, there are 120 employees and 100 data production personnel are separately operated.

In December of last year, Alchera established a joint venture (JV) 'Place A' with Snow and is developing real-time three-dimensional (3D) whole body recognition technology.

The AI face recognition solution supplied by Alchera consists of two parts. First, e-KYC is a service that compares a user's self-camera photo with an ID, and second, ID verification is a service that compares the ID photo with a photo registered with each issuing organization. Alchera's AI facial recognition technology can scan about 1 million people per 0.5 second. At this time, the scanned biometric (face) information is encrypted and then distributed and stored to ensure security.

The identity verification service using AI face recognition is effective in preventing counterfeits and identity theft since selfies and ID photos can be compared. It is convenient to not construct a separate equipment that does the recognition. It uses an intuitive method of taking pictures to improve the user's experience. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea introduced this service for non-face-to-face passport recognition and issuance.

Youngkyoo Hwang, CEO of Alchera, said, “Alchera’s AI facial recognition solution is currently provided in a server-built form (on-premises), but it will be expanded to a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based subscription model in the future. Through this, we will support digitalization of financial sector in earnest”

By Staff Reporter Dain Oh (ohdain@etnews.com)