Introduction to Identity Verification
For businesses to make the transition to going online, it is becoming a must in order to keep up with the times since nearly 59% of the entire population is connected to the internet.
However, it becomes a crucial need to keep security up with today’s standards as cybercriminals cause financial institutions and companies billions in losses each year. Most of these crimes happen to be various forms of fraud due to identity theft such as credit card fraud or tax fraud.
Identity fraud takes place when a person’s sensitive personal data is obtained to hacking techniques such as phishing and malware. The cybercriminal is free to do whatever they wish using the victim’s data such as committing frauds to reap benefits while the victim suffers the repercussions.
Otherwise, the thief may sell the victim’s information to interested parties on the darknet who further commit these crimes.
In order to fight off these threats and attacks, global law enforcement agencies place regulations and compliances for businesses to abide or face hefty fines. These regulations including KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) checks where the customer’s identity needs to be proven in order to prevent all sorts of fraud.
With technology’s presence reshaping manual processes into more efficient automated procedures, identity verification solutions now exist in order to arm businesses and financial institutes with the necessary means to keep their operations and customers safe from criminal activities while providing a seamless and improved customer experience.
Different kinds of online identification verification
Various kinds of identity verification solutions exist for different kinds of scenarios and to mitigate different kinds of fraud. Here are a few examples of online identity verification:
Biometric Verification
A customer identity can be proven through the use of their biometrics such as their fingerprint or facial recognition. This is exceptionally effective to fight off identity fraud as it is nearly impossible for a cybercriminal to cheat this kind of security check.
Liveness detection and depth-sensing in a matter of seconds make it even tougher to fool the AI-powered verification system whether the thief tries using a mask or the victim’s photo.
Document Verification
Perhaps the most effective way to counter fraud is for a customer to verify themselves using an official document that proves their identity such as their government-issued ID card, passport, or driver’s license. The AI-powered OCR scans the information on this document to verify with entered user records.
Once proven the information sent to the back office for further evaluation by a KYC expert. This entire process is done in a matter of minutes, saving the user the time and hassle of verifying themselves manually travelling to an office and waiting in long queues when the manual process itself is prone to errors.
AML Screening
Beyond verifying the identity of a person, making necessary Anti-Money Laundering checks is necessary compliance to follow using online identity verification solutions.
The user when identified is also screened against constantly updated databases of global watchlists in order to prove that the person has no ties or dark history related to financial crimes otherwise they are barred from being provided with any service by the business.
Video KYC
As an added measure of security, businesses may choose to perform identity verification of their customers through an expert that communicates with the customer virtually on a live call and walks them through the KYC process.
The use of both AI and Human intelligence makes for heightened efficiency in proving a person’s identity such as making observations of the user’s responses and behaviour during the process. This kind of strict and efficient provides a high level of security against all kinds of possible cybercrimes and tactics hackers may pull off to fake an identity to commit fraud.
