Xayone Best Practice: Combatting Identity and Document Fraud at Border Control

Border control is increasingly critical in an era of expanding global air travel combined with geopolitical unrest, where travelers regularly experience the operational impact of safety measures. At the same time, fraud is rising: travelers attempt to cross borders without required visas, with forged visas or passports, or by using another person’s travel documents, with identity theft and documentary fraud becoming common challenges. Airlines and ground handlers carry legal and financial responsibility for verifying documents and can face significant fines when transporting passengers with invalid documentation, driving up complexity, cost, and processing time unless verification is improved.

To address these pressures, solutions that authenticate travel documents, perform biometric matching, and enable verification via mobile devices can automate and strengthen checks. Integration with TIMATIC (IATA’s documentation-requirements database) and Amadeus (a reservation and distribution system containing passenger and flight information) is positioned as essential to keep decision-making aligned with current official rules and passenger data, improving check-in and boarding processes.

Within this context, Xayone—a CIAM and identity verification provider headquartered across Morocco, Luxembourg, and the UAE—implemented a document and identity verification solution for Royal Air Maroc (RAM) Handling, which operates Morocco’s 20 national airports, including Casablanca as Royal Air Maroc’s hub. The delivered core is Xayone Trust Services, built on an API-first architecture and designed for compliance-heavy scenarios such as KYC, with capabilities including document verification, electronic signatures, logging, reporting, and auditing. The solution integrates TIMATIC and Amadeus and works with locked-down Regula handheld devices to detect advanced fraud elements (e.g., hidden security features and holograms). Initial rollout at Casablanca deployed six devices in transit and boarding areas, with plans to expand across all Moroccan airports, supporting multi-tenant use by multiple airlines while improving efficiency, compliance, and reducing inadmissible passengers and related penalties.

• Fraud includes traveling without a visa, using forged visas, forged passports, or other forged travel documents.
• Some travelers use another person’s travel documents, with or without that person’s consent.
• Airlines and ground handlers are responsible for checking travel documents and are fined when documents are not valid.
• TIMATIC is an IATA-provided database containing documentation requirements for international air passengers.
• Amadeus is a computer reservation and global distribution system containing information about flights and passengers.
• Xayone is based in Morocco, Luxembourg, and the UAE.
• RAM Handling operates 20 national airports in Morocco, including Casablanca.
• The Xayone platform has two major components: Advanced Identity Management and Trust Services.
• The solution integrates with Regula handheld devices that support document verification and can be locked down to the use case.
• The initial rollout at Casablanca deployed six devices in the transit area and at boarding gates.

• “Everyone travelling by air has experienced the consequences of travel safety when lining up in front of border control.”
• “Documentary fraud and identity theft have become a common challenge.”
• “This places greater pressure on the airlines and the ground handlers to ensure travel safety and to control the flow of individuals travelling across borders.”
• “Adding solutions that verify the authenticity of travel documents, perform biometric matching, and ensure verification (using mobile devices and other technologies) help greatly to address such challenges.”
• “To improve the process at the checkin, systems require close integration with TIMATIC and Amadeus to ensure their information is always up-to-date.”
• “With a modern architecture and following an API-first approach, the Xayone platform provides powerful integration and customization capabilities needed for such specific use cases.”
• “One of the challenges is that travel rules and verification rules vary by country.”
• “The use of advanced technologies is required for identifying fraud that can’t be detected by just looking visually at documents, such as hidden elements within documents or efficient verification of holograms.”
• “Thus, a reporting system that provides a comprehensive reporting system on agents, flights, and access rights is required for better evidence management.”
• “While being built on a standard solution, the project requires a significant amount of customization.”