Yusr partners with Verimo to bring account opening down to eight minutes

New customers now scan their ID and record a short video in the app, and the check comes back while they are still sitting there.

17 February 2025 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Product & technology

RIYADH, 17 February 2025 — Yusr Bank today announced a partnership with Verimo FZ-LLC, an identity verification provider headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to run the identity checks behind every new Yusr Current account. Verimo has been live across the full application flow on iOS and Android since 3 February, after a pilot that ran through the bank's closed preview from November 2024.

The change has taken the median time to open an account from just over twenty minutes to about eight. In the closed preview, a large share of applications waited in a queue for an operations analyst to compare the customer's photograph against the document by eye, often the following working day. That comparison now happens inside the app in seconds, and the overwhelming majority of applications finish in a single sitting without a person ever touching them.

The checks themselves have not been relaxed. Every applicant still presents a valid Saudi national ID or Iqama, and every application is still screened against the bank's financial crime controls before an account number is issued. What has gone is the wait.

8 min

Median time to open an account, down from 21 minutes in the closed preview

94%

Of applications now completed in one sitting, without coming back later

Seconds

Typical time for the document and face check to return a result in the app

What happens in the app

Three steps, one screen at a time

The applicant sees a camera and two prompts. Everything else happens behind them.

Scan the document

The customer photographs a Saudi national ID or Iqama. Verimo reads the document, checks the security features and layout against what a genuine one should look like, and confirms the details on the front match the machine-readable data.

Record a short video

The customer records a few seconds of their face and follows a simple on-screen prompt. Verimo matches that footage against the photograph printed on the document, and confirms a real person is in front of the camera rather than a photo, a mask or a replayed recording.

Result comes back in the app

A clear pass goes straight through and the account is opened. Anything the check cannot resolve is routed to the Yusr operations team in Riyadh, who review it and come back to the customer the same day.

"The temptation, when you are trying to make something faster, is to check less. We did the opposite. A twenty-minute wait was not buying us better assurance — it was buying us a backlog and a lot of people who gave up halfway. Verimo compares the document and the face more consistently than a queue of tired analysts at eleven at night, and it does it while the customer is still with us."

Omar Al-Zahrani, Chief Technology Officer, Yusr Bank

Why it mattered

Yusr was licensed by the Saudi Central Bank in 2024 and built for customers who expect to do everything from a phone. Account opening was the one part of that promise the bank could not keep at launch: applicants who started in the evening frequently waited until the next working day to hear anything, and a meaningful share never came back to finish.

Verimo was selected after a competitive evaluation of providers working with banks across the Gulf, on the strength of its accuracy on Saudi national ID and Iqama documents specifically. The two companies spent the closed preview tuning thresholds so that genuine customers with a scratched card, a strong glare or a poorly lit room are asked to retry rather than rejected.

What comes next

The same check will be extended in the second half of 2025 to cover customers who recover an account after losing a phone, replacing the current callback process with the same in-app flow. Yusr is also working with Verimo to shorten the retry loop, so that applicants whose first attempt is unclear are told exactly what to fix before they try again.

Open a Yusr Current account

You will need a valid Saudi ID or Iqama, a phone number registered in your name, and a few minutes somewhere with decent light.

Start your application

About Yusr

Yusr Bank is a Saudi Joint Stock Company licensed and supervised by the Saudi Central Bank as a digital bank. Founded in 2024 and headquartered on King Fahd Road in Al Olaya, Riyadh, Yusr offers current accounts, savings goals, a mada debit card, instant transfers and instalment payments to retail customers across the Kingdom, entirely through its mobile app.

About Verimo

Verimo FZ-LLC is an identity verification provider headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Verimo builds document authentication and face matching technology used by banks, finance companies and regulated fintechs across the Gulf and wider region.

Media enquiries

Yusr Bank Communications
media@yusr.com.sa · Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

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