(Newswire.net — August 4, 2022) — With the advancement of technology, it is no surprise that there is a way of automating identity verification to verify the identity of someone through the use of a system. This is a good way to combat identity theft, especially in situations where someone is trying to open a new account at the bank, applying for a loan or any other financial-related issues. Although identity verification is implemented as a safety feature to combat fraud and identity theft, it also plays a role in assisting financial institutions in situations such as knowing their customer and anti-money laundering efforts.
Digital Identity Verification
As the name states, digital identity verification is the act of verifying one’s identity, just digitally. Due to the pandemic, there is a demand amongst businesses to detect identity fraud before issues such as data breaches, account takeover attack and identity theft occurs.
To verify the person online, there are measures such as biometric verification, facial recognition and the use of digital ID document verification to assist companies, and public and private institutions in ensuring the person is who they declare to be.
Bringing convenience for its users, having a digital ID verification can act as a substitute when their physical ID is not present. The use of digital ID can also help to speed up verification during checks and scans at places like the airport.
It is important to integrate digital identity verification as it acts as a deterrence against identity fraud to happen. During account opening or customer onboarding processes, the authenticity of the application can be determined by the verification of the applicant through digital ID verification. The digital ID verification, also allows the institution to run checks on the background of the applicant so they do not let it be processed if the applicant is a fraudster or criminal with intentions to scam the institution.
How Does It Work?
The process of verifying the identity of the person depends on the method used, there are many types of verification and solutions available. One of the methods is the use of facial features, it works by comparing the face biometric with verified data set that the government has an archive of. This method verifies the information that is presented to what was submitted previously, it compares the information given to the data that has been recorded previously.
Some of the other methods include ID document verification, liveness detection, knowledge-based authentication, one-time password verification, trusted identity network, and database methods.
The most simple verification is the ID document, it checks the legitimacy of the documents that have been presented by the person. Liveness detection determines the authenticity of a selfie via the detection of spoofing attacks such as face masks or photos of photos.
Other methods include knowledge-based authentication, which is the act of presenting a question to the applicant via the personal information file that has been presented beforehand. For one-time passcode, a single-use passcode will be transmitted to the user via SMS or email for verification purposes.
For a trusted identity network, it leverages another provider to verify the identity of the applicant without delaying the process of opening an account and onboarding. Database methods use data from social media and offline databases to verify the information submitted.
Benefits
The most obvious benefit of using an ID document verification would be the facilitation of opening an account through a financial institution. It verifies the identity of the applicant by checking the legitimacy of the applicant’s ID.
The purpose of this is to capture and analyse data so as to authenticate identity documents that were issued by the government. This prevents fraudulent activities from happening as authentication of identity has to be done before any activities can be executed.
Now that most phones have built-in cameras, it allows one to capture data and images of their ID documents. With the assistance of artificial intelligence and advanced authenticity algorithms in place, analysis of an image to check for its authenticity can be done instantaneously.
By implementing biometric verification, facial comparison adds a layer of trust when determining whether the user is the same as the one in the ID document. Other methods include liveness detection, where users have to smile to help in detecting spoofing attacks.
What Is It Used For?
Most of the time, digital identity verification is used to assist in the remote onboarding of new account openings, while improving the customer experience. With new customers expecting an option to open a bank account online, the financial institutions will then have to provide the option to do so. As such, digital ID verification comes into play.
To prevent fraudulent activities from infiltrating the system, financial institutions have to implement filters and checks in the registration stage. In the event of a false identity opening an account, the person behind the account may use it for fraudulent acts, which may, in turn, sabotage the financial institution in the long run.
Upon verifying the identity of the applicant, it allows the financial institution to hold the person accountable to the account itself. With a face behind the account, it acts as an assurance that the account is being opened by this new customer in goodwill.
Apart from that, digital identity verification provides users with a seamless experience as they do not have to go through hoops and loops to verify their identity before proceeding to the next step.
Conclusion
With that, we’ve come to the end of this article about identity verification systems. Organisations and businesses that do not garner the trust of their consumers risk losing them to their competitors. Oftentimes, the lack of ID verification services is exploited by scammers and fraudsters which in turn loses the trust of the consumers. With the multi-layered checks and authentication put in place, it allows the institution to differentiate between a customer and a scammer pretending to be someone. Therefore, with identity verification put in place, it allows for both the institution and the consumer to trust one another when an authentic process is in place.