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digital identity is the new money
NANSEN.ID is a digital identity solution designed for opposition members and political emigrants from sanctioned countries, regions experiencing military conflicts, refugees, and homeless individuals. It targets those who lack or have been deprived of a complete set of documents necessary for opening bank accounts in the USA, EU, UK, and other developed countries.
In 15 sanctioned countries (excluding China), there are 550 million people, and not all of them are culpable. We aim to assist these groups in establishing constructive dialogue within Anti-Money Laundering frameworks with entities such as OFAC, FinCEN, the Federal Reserve Board, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and with units like the CIA, FBI’s Most Wanted, and Interpol's Red Notices.
We collaborate and seek to support the work of specialists in investigating corruption and money laundering, as well as investigative journalists who have participated in initiatives like the Panama Papers and similar projects.
We strive to prevent the risk of power concentration and aim to make interaction decentralized and transparent. For this purpose, we plan to utilize the latest technological advancements from Worldcoin and Solana.
people
Currently, a huge number of countries and nationalities (Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Nigeria, and to some extent other sanctioned countries) and new industries (for example, cryptocurrencies), NGOs and charitable organizations (and their recipients) fall into the "grey" zone of compliance: when banks (and correspondent banks) cannot (or do not want to) understand the specifics and differences of potential users, and lump everyone together, closing or refusing to open bank accounts (and visas too).
The problem does not disappear from this, but only becomes bigger: not all Russians and Belarusians support Putin and Lukashenko, not all Palestinians support HAMAS against Israel - such a general perception by banks from developed countries pushes their "supporters in terms of values" back into the hands of bloody and corrupt leaders and their accomplices, leaving people and their money to support the lifeblood of the local economies of totalitarian regimes. They force such clients to use the dirty services of money laundering banks, unregulated cryptocurrencies, and crypto-exchanges. Instead, they could accelerate the import of brains and talents, and their assets from these countries to themselves, getting more supporters and strength in the end to fight.
and users
Our users are those people (and companies) from sanctioned countries who do not support totalitarian and corrupt regimes, and would like to withdraw their capital and keep it abroad, because they have already emigrated or, while being in their homeland, do not want to indirectly support the lifeblood of the local economy with their capital.
Their problem is that they (and their companies) today face mass closures or refusals to open accounts by foreign banks. Today Nansen ID (like Nansen himself once) is focused on emigrants from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, but we want to quickly test the model in the first markets and scale to other sanctioned countries (and China).
Our clients are banks (especially digital banks), fintech startups, and correspondent banks (as well as cryptocurrencies and crypto-exchanges, stablecoins, and CBDC projects), who would like to work with such clients and be transparent with regulators, but do not know how to ask and monitor better than their usual clients. For them, we solve the problem of finding new clients (or forced refusals from current ones) - and profit from managing their funds.
inventing Nansen Passport
Nansen passports, originally and officially stateless persons passports, were internationally recognized refugee travel documents from 1922 to 1938, first issued by the League of Nations's Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees to stateless refugees. Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen was a Norwegian polymath and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He gained prominence at various points in his life as an explorer, scientist, diplomat and humanitarian. The first Nansen passports were issued following an international agreement reached at the Intergovernmental Conference on Identity Certificates for Russian Refugees, convened by Fridtjof Nansen in his role as High Commissioner for Refugees for the League of Nations. By 1942, they were honored by governments in 52 countries.
usable ID
For our end-users Nansen ID allows not to answer the same questions a hundred times - but to effectively reuse (re-usable identity) the existing data and answers.
For users, we also act as a marketplace for banking and fintech services that understand them and are ready to accept their ID and type of risk.
(Imagine that in Onfido or ComplyAdvantage you could not only not answer the same questions every time during onboarding, but also immediately see recommended banks and applications that we can start using right away!)
For bank-clients:
in addition to a better understanding of each target audience and more in-depth EDD (enhanced due diligence), we also bring clients new users who are looking for such banks and are ready to provide an increased amount of information for more transparency. Such a "re-usable identity" allows us to have such an architecture that solves the problem of KYCC for correspondent banks due to new regulatory requirements of AMLA.
“Every time I interact with a new financial institution, accountant, lawyer or business partner I find myself having to email scans of utility bills, pictures of passports and (and this continues to astonish me) PDFs of corporate letterhead in order to get anything done. This is an incredible friction in the economy, a waste of time and money for all concerned.” David Birch
David Birch
Immigration
Building the Network state: from banking and fintech to visas
We not only plan to scale from emigrants from three to 15 sanctioned countries, but also to add visa services to banking services (as well as online voting). When you apply for a visa to another country - the number and essence of the questions are repeated by 80-90% each time, as in the case of opening bank accounts (and bank statements are often also required to confirm the availability of funds and address).
Your answers, however, are not re-usable, and you are forced to answer the same thing every time not only with banks but also with such visa application outsourcing services as VFS Global, CSC Global, Teleperformance, BLS International, CKGS, TLScontact
(is there anyone who is satisfied as a user with these companies?!). Imagine that you can reuse your answers and data not only with Onfido and ComplyAdvantage and their partner banks but also when applying for visas? (A good example is the APEC business card.)
Compliance and regulators
Digital identity is everything about compliance and acceptability
We are big proponents of blockchain and decentralization - but no idea or project on digital identity will be successful if it does not focus on compliance and regulators (and not just new technologies).
We have experience in participating in the FinCEN innovation group (and the Federal Reserve Bank’s too) to exchange experiences about achievements in compliance and AML - and we want to help establish a constructive dialogue between those who do not support authoritarian regimes in their countries and fight corruption and violence on their part, and regulators (FedReserve, OCC, FinCEN and OFAC from US Treasury, ECB, Bank of England and FCA, MAS), immigration and intelligence services (CIA, FBI, Interpol, etc.), which regularly deal with and publish blacklists.
We have experience launching and managing a (licensed) digital bank in the USA and working with partner banks in the USA, EU, UK, and Singapore; in compliance and storing personal data in such a way as to comply with the regulations of several countries at once.
Compliance crowdsourcing (and crowdfunding)
Investigations like the Panama Papers increasingly show that successful investigations against corruption and money laundering are carried out by independent investigators and journalists. Often, in addition to professional qualities, they are distinguished by the ability to use non-obvious information sources and databases.
We are not a compliance provider ourselves: we give open API to any compliance providers who have their own quality databases for checks, but also, importantly, to such independent groups of investigators. This improves our quality and complexity of checks, and allows them to monetize their own "findings".
We allow them to unite with each other, self-organize and exchange information, build a dialogue with regulators and anti- money laundering specialists. We want the company to eventually get B Corp status in the UK (and for the subsidiary - non-profit in the USA) to redistribute part of our profit to financial support for such organizations and their investigations like Anti-Corruption Foundation by Alexei Navalny, Mikhail Khodorkovsky's "Dossier", Svetlana Tikhanovskaya's office, OCCR, and others around the world.
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Tech-for-good
Decentralized ID
Honesty is the best currency
We are for those users who understand that due to nationality, place of residence, or industry of employment, they are in a group with an increased risk for banks (and visa centers) in developed countries - and the constructive answer here will not be denial and offense, but interaction and transparency.
We allow clients to ask more questions - and get more answers from users: and so that the user does not get tired of this, effectively reuse these answers. In addition to a larger number of questions (data sets), and using not only traditional official but also non-obvious databases from independent investigators - we introduce a mechanism of "social verification": each participant can both recommend (take responsibility) for other users, and quickly request recommendations for themselves (social guarantee, like with a loan).
We are not judges - we allow you to ask more, answer more detailed and understandably, save answers, and then not waste time and energy on reuse. We are afraid of any concentration of power, and want to make a decentralized identity solution - so we want to use the developments and infrastructure of Worldcoin and Solana.
Why me, why us?
Slava Solodkiy
I hold Global Talent visas for both the UK and France ('passeport talent'), and I have had an O1 (extraordinary ability) visa in the USA, as well as an APEC business travel card. For my own digital bank, which serves international companies and foreigners in the USA (since March I left all operational positions in the bank, but remained a major shareholder). Together with the bank, I gained experience in participating in the FinCEN innovation group (and the Federal Reserve Bank of NY) in exchanging experiences about achievements in compliance and AML, interaction with regulators and partner banks in different countries. Received a large number of fintech awards and other recognition.
Yulia and Polina work with me as co-founders. Julia is an Oxford graduate, works for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is a "foreign agent" (a status that the Putin regime assigns to influential opposition figures to complicate their lives and the ability to express their opinion). Polina works at the department of alternative finance at Cambridge, constantly and actively consults and works with many fintech and blockchain projects in the directions of big data analysis, ML, market analysis, strategy.
We have a lot of past experience in working and interacting with leading opposition figures, journalists, and independent investigators in the field of corruption and money laundering.
Blog
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Raise your voice!
OR MORE
As long as we are silent - we (and others) do not know how many of us there are, with whom and how to build a dialogue. It's time for us to unite and at least count ourselves: this will give us confidence, a voice in the market and in negotiations, and our partners a better understanding of who they can deal with, provide support.
Now we still do not have the status of "data processor" and "data controller" - so we still cannot ask for any sensitive personal data. Now we are just testing the market - how many of us, how much our fear prevents us from talking about ourselves and taking our voice into account, what is the size of pain and demand in the area of opening and servicing bank accounts (and visas) abroad.
Please answer a few simple questions and leave your contact in the waiting list :
