Identity Verification entails a lot more than customer verification

Identity theft and digital fraud are on the rise. Cybersecurity is of essence for all the organisations and digital businesses dealing with consumer data. With the increasing number of high-profile data breaches, and online frauds affecting millions of consumers, online identity verification of stakeholders has set off as a significant requirement for businesses of every size.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed major business operations introducing remote processes, establishing trust among consumers and organizations is now inevitable. Be it a customer onboarding or business partnership, identity verification is vital for almost every operation. 

“According to VMware Carbon Black report, there’s an increase of 238% in cyberattacks from February to April 2020”

The future of identity verification

The term verification has been used for ages, that refers to the checks or proofs about existence, correctness and truth of something. Talking about identity verification, it generally indicates a process for validating a person’s identity by confirming the personally identifiable information against real human claiming that identity. 

Given the pace at which markets are shifting towards the digital sphere, identity verification is the need of the hour to secure business and to provide consumers with a seamless customer experience. From in-person identity verification to online customer authentication through AI-powered SaaS products, the ID verification market has evolved already. Looking into the crystal ball, it’s safe to say that identity verification holds a bright future in the business industry.

Identity Verification – Going beyond customer verification

Identity verification is a lot more than “show your ID card to enter the club” or “ present your driving license to officer to prove your age”. The AI-powered ID verification goes beyond customer verification and the advancements in technology are enhancing the scope and evolution of the industry. Identity verification is a powerful tool to perform simple consumer verification to complex corporate screenings and remote biometric authentication, read below to explore more about these advancements. 

Know your customer through digital ID verification

Over the past few decades, the concept of know your customer or KYC has gained traction in the financial world. Considering the rapid increase in the digital and financial frauds, regulators have made it mandatory for every organization, dealing with money, to comply with KYC regulations. ID verification and customer due diligence are the minimum compliance obligations of reporting entities. 

Identity verification is an inherent part of the KYC process that enables businesses to securely onboard new customers and to authenticate existing ones in real-time. The best approach to fulfilling these compliance requirements is to choose multi-factor authentication or multi-layered authentication by using a combination of various ID verification services (such as document verification, address verification, and biometric authentication) for customer verification. Multi-layered verification approach provides a quick, convenient, and frictionless customer experience with minimum error rate. 

Read more: Instant Client Onboarding with E-KYC Screening

KYB – Protect yourself from shell companies 

Living in the digital era, identity verification isn’t just applicable to humans. Individuals aren’t the only ones posing threat towards an enterprise; corporate entities (partners, corporate consumers, affiliates, etc.) can be equally threatening and that’s the base of the concept of Know Your Business (KYB).

Identity verification for businesses to detect shell and swindling companies and saves organisations from falling into the trap of fraudsters and enables them to stamp out aggressors. Moreover, with EU rolling out stringent regulations for customer due diligence and FINCEN’s requirement for companies to be aware of Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs) before commencing a relationship, business verification is a pressing priority. 

Minor protection through age verification

With digitization and technological advancements, access to the internet has never been this easy for children as it is now. This ease of access has pushed children into the pit of darknet and as a result, not just the children but their parents and associated businesses are suffering as well. Identity verification plays a vital role in facilitating businesses to comply with age verification laws through real-time online age verification.

Unlike the traditional age gates, AI-based age verification solution incorporating document and face verification service efficiently authenticates the age of the individuals before allowing them access to age-restricted products and services. Because of sophisticated technology, the age verification process is instant and provides highly accurate results to ensure that buyers of age are not shunned away due to false positives or time consuming verification processes. 

Fraud detection and prevention

Digital frauds including identity theft, account takeover, Card-Not-Present (CNP) and chargebacks frauds, all have one thing in common, i.e. unauthorized access to credentials. Fraudsters get past the verification gateway due to lacking or inefficient authentication checks. Binary checks (username and passwords) are not enough to identify imposters. AI-powered identity verification serves as a productive tool to mitigate these frauds. 

Various ID verification services ensures that only authorized users are accessing the services or applications. Through a liveness detection feature, businesses can ensure that a real accredited user is present on the other end at the time of verification. Moreover, the intelligent verification solution detects any spoof attacks that con artists may use to bypass authentication checks. All this is done within seconds, hence, identifying identity thieves in real-time.