In digital lending, growth in application volume brings a paradox: the more (and quicker) you scale, the higher your onboarding bills climb.
Most KYC services use usage-based pricing. You pay per API call, document processed, or verification completed. This creates a direct relationship between success and costs—more customers means higher bills. While all growth increases overheads, tiered SaaS pricing becomes impractical when applicant surges fluctuate due to seasonal demands or market conditions.
This calls for tech stack optimizations that don’t penalize growth and maintain predictable overheads without workflow overhauls.
Is ID Processing Driving Your Onboarding Costs?
Identity verification is critical for onboarding security—with 50% of fraud attempts involving altered or forged documents, robust ID processing becomes essential.
But ID processing can also become a major expense in your KYC stack. Usage-based pricing spikes costs when monthly applications surge, making your most successful periods your most expensive ones.
What if you could process IDs with a lightweight system you own at fixed cost?
That’s why we built SlimRead: an AI model that reads ID cards for a fixed monthly cost, deployed in your infrastructure. No usage fees. No scaling penalties. No external dependencies.
Rethinking ID Verification Infrastructure
SlimRead is a Small Language Model trained specifically to process IDs in your environment.
Instead of general-purpose AI models (typically seen in SaaS document parsing offerings), it does one task: read ID cards. SlimRead understands ID structures, field relationships, and document variations specific to identity verification. It processes documents faster and more accurately than generic solutions because it’s optimized for your exact needs.
What’s more — it runs entirely within your infrastructure on 8-16GB RAM servers without GPU acceleration. Customer data never leaves your environment, simplifying compliance and eliminating external data concerns.
Operational Impact
Predictable Economics: Transform variable onboarding costs into fixed infrastructure expenses. Get predictable monthly costs that improve unit economics as you scale.
Operational Control: Own your ID reading capability instead of depending on external APIs. Faster iteration cycles, easier compliance, and optimization for your specific documents.
Enhanced Performance: Purpose-built training delivers higher accuracy and faster processing. Fewer failed reads mean shorter onboarding flows and less manual review.
Infrastructure Simplicity: No need for specialized GPU infrastructure or vendor-specific setups that IT teams have to manage. SlimRead runs on standard server hardware your team already understands.
Scaling Flexibility: Add document types, expand markets, or adjust processing without external dependencies.
Economic Comparison
How SaaS-based ID Analysis Works
Most identity verification services charge per document processed with tiered pricing that reduces per-unit costs at higher volumes. While the rate per document may decrease as you scale, your total monthly bill still grows significantly with usage.
Let’s assume that the following is the tiered pricing that your service provider offers you:
- 0-50K documents: $0.15 per document
- 50K-200K documents: $0.12 per document
- 200K+ documents: $0.10 per document
This would mean:
- At 100K applications: ~$13,500/month (mixed rates)
- At 500K applications: ~$53,000/month (with volume discounts)
- At 1M applications: ~$103,000/month (best available rates)
How SlimRead’s Pricing Model Works
Instead of paying per document, you deploy SlimRead once in your infrastructure and process unlimited documents for a fixed monthly cost.
- Fixed infrastructure cost: ~$2,000/month
- Process unlimited ID cards
This means, even with tiered SaaS pricing, your costs continue scaling while SlimRead remains flat!
- At 100K applications: $13,500 vs. $2,000 (85% savings)
- At 500K applications: $53,000 vs. $2,000 (96% savings)
- At 1M applications: $103,000 vs. $2,000 (98% savings)
Note: Price mentioned is for illustrative purposes only. Actual price may vary depending on requirements
Way Forward
SlimRead can be deployed as a standalone service for teams who want to own their ID reading infrastructure, or integrated as part of PowerCred’s managed onboarding workflows.
For standalone deployment, you get the AI model, technical specifications, and integration support to deploy SlimRead within your existing infrastructure. You maintain full control while eliminating usage-based costs.
For managed workflows, PowerCred can orchestrate SlimRead with other KYC services like liveness detection, fraud analysis, and document validation—creating a complete onboarding solution where you own the core ID reading capability while we handle the workflow and other integrations.
This flexible approach lets you choose the level of control and management that fits your operational needs, whether you want to build entirely in-house or leverage PowerCred’s expertise in onboarding orchestration.
Curious to know how SlimRead can fit into your KYC stack? Let’s talk. Book a demo with us today!
