Facial Recognition: A Technology for Online Businesses to Prevent Fraud

Today, biometric technology has traditionally established itself and has become an integral part of the security sector. Facial recognition among all biometrics is an active expansion at an industrial level. It is estimated that facial recognition technology will be generating a revenue of $9.6 billion by the end of 2020 along with the CAGR i.e. Compound Annual Growth Rate of 21.3%. In the IT industry, facial recognition technology is estimated to grow with a CAGR of 3.3% by 2020. With the increasing demand for AI-based technologies, facial recognition is more specifically contributing to security assistance and solutions.

The ability to visualize and recognize facial features is an imperative aspect of life. With the facial recognition technology, we can not only identify the faces we know but also can authenticate the ones we have never seen before to be aware of the possible perils. This technology is a complicated process that uses the knowledge that compares a number of faces to each other. Facebook, a social networking platform is using this technology to label people in the photographs, smartphones have an advance system of unlocking i.e. face unlock, banking and financial institutions are employing it to verify their onboarding customers in order to proceed them with the transaction, face recognition cameras are installed in the streets which police is using for mass surveillance to detect the criminals. Not only this, a large number of other industries are taking leverage of this intriguing technology. 

Facial Recognition: Future of Biometrics

Among all the common biometrics which include fingerprint scanning, iris, and retina scanning, hand geometry and patterns, facial recognition is a ground-breaking discovery that is leaving no stone unturned. It is covering a large number of industries with its innovative use-cases that were not even thought before. The lucrative opportunities of this technology admire the business owners to integrate it within their system to streamline them and robust the onboarding process. Not only businesses but consumers are also availing a better user experience as they now do not need to manually enter a huge set of information to prove their identity.

Online Industries Taking Advantage of Facial Scanning

Facial recognition technology is infancy innovation as compared to other biometric authentication mechanisms. The reason is the potentiality level of this technology that is providing incredible safety across a broad range of global verticals. Online businesses are taking leverage of this technology to bring in transparency into their systems and avoid the possible list of fraud.

Traditional Institutions

The traditional institutions which include banks, financial institutions, insurance, and investment companies need to ensure KYC and AML compliance at their end. Face recognition technology can facilitate the online portals and traditional systems to identify and verify their customers to fulfill Customer Due Diligence (CDD) requirements. Also, to vet the onboarding identities, IPO drives can streamline their online processes and can use this technology for investor verification. 

Financial institutions are the main target of online fraudsters where they exploit vulnerabilities in the system and perform malicious activities using fake identities. Face verification can help authenticate the user using supporting documents and evidence that are enough to verify a particular identity. Also, this will help eliminate the engagement of PEPs into the financial sectors. 

Digital Businesses

The global regulatory authorities are imposing strict regulations for digital businesses to tighten their KYC and AML compliances within the business. For this, all businesses are obliged to comply with the local regulators to fulfill diligence duties by scrutinizing the traders, freelancers, end-users, customers, etc. through digital identity verification. Online forex brokers, financial stock traders, digital banking, FinTech, and the freelance marketplace can utilize facial recognition technology for user verification. Facial scanning is a real-time solution for the online identities for identification and verification of facial features in seconds. This facilitates not only the digital businesses but online customers while providing them a streamlined user experience.

E-commerce

The online marketplace has a high risk of online fraud and payment scams. The online marketplace includes online stores and brands that sell goods online and have different payment methods. Scammers find out and the loopholes and try to fraud the system in one way or the other. 

Online payment facilitators can utilize embedded digital facial biometric technology to combat payment fraud. When the customer proceeds to payment or cart items, through online face verification, the identity will be verified in real-time against the picture on id card or any similar supported document. This will help reduce the likelihood of a fraudulent transaction.

Another use-case of facial recognition technology in e-commerce is the age verification of the under-age community to refrain them buy age-restricted online goods. This can be done by examining the facial features through innovative technology and providing the status of accepted or rejected. In this way, a business can prevent itself from the risk of heavy fines and reputational damage.

Travel and Hospitality

The inclination of the travel industry to online identity verification is rising rapidly. Air and sea travel companies are using digital ways to verify customers while providing them streamline customer onboarding experience. Not only this, for online hotel bookings and accommodation, online face verification can help in verifying the customers easily.

This is a supreme solution for both consumers and businesses that help them cater to large traffic of passengers easily. In the travel industry, there are high chances of fake identities and identity theft cases, to prevent a business from such scammers, face verification can help reduce the risks of identity fraud by authenticating the identity particulars while online bookings and confirmations.

Health and Medicare

In the healthcare industry, hospitals, and medical insurance companies, identity verification holds crucial importance. The threats of false insurance claims and false identities should be catered digitally to avoid fraudulent identities from ruining the online systems and stealing the identities of patients. 

Healthcare professionals tend to spend energy and time to manage the patient’s records, access them and retrieve them, facial recognition has covered it efficiently. That valuable time can be spent to deal with emergency situations. Keeping sensitive data of patients is a crucial task that can be done through biometric face verification. Hospitals can identify the patients through facial recognition and can verify against the picture on the hospital supported documents. In this way, no fake identities can fraud and avail hospital services. 

Entertainment

Social networking and gaming industries can introduce transparency into their system using facial recognition technology. Age sensitive gaming and social media platforms can verify the age of the user by verifying the facial patterns and features of each onboarding customer. No under-age community could be able to enter into the network which is age-restricted and the identity will be authenticated at the time of registration.

Recruitment Companies

For the online verification of employ with past experience and education credentials, facial recognition technology can be used. A user can upload a live picture that can be then verified against the provided documents to authenticate the true identity. Also, for remote hiring, employ can be easily authenticated. This is highly beneficial for companies that lack the electronic signature capability and find traditional email not enough for recruitment purposes.

In the education sector, schools and colleges can adopt facial recognition technology to keep track of the records of their students. This would be easy to manage, process and retrieve the student data i.e. health record, academic record, personal identity, etc. in an efficient manner.

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