Melissa UK Team | 2022, Fraud Prevention, United Kingdom | identity verification

With the transition to hybrid cloud technology accelerating across various sectors, the use of biometric technology has only been taken seriously over the past few years with the pandemic shining a spotlight on its benefits.

A major use case is remote onboarding of customers and clients, verifying their identity on a digital scale in a matter of seconds, rather than manual checks where a person would have to come in and present various forms of ID to a person. 

The Increase in fraudulent activity

As we continue to transcend into a more ‘digital’ tech-savvy world, we see a continuous rise in digital transactions and online engagement, which is corresponding to a surge in online fraud. UK finance alone found that in the first half of 2021 a total of £750 million was lost due to fraudulent activity. A 30 per cent increase compared to the previous half of 2020. 

Businesses will need to adapt to the latest technology to verify the identities of individuals so they safeguard themselves from these rapidly growing cyber threats. In exchange, they will regain confidence in everyday onboarding practices while continuing to adapt to digital changes in their marketplace.

Biometric Authentication – A vital element in today’s know your customer checks. 

It is biometric technology making a big shift in the ID verification space at this very moment, commonly seen as a mechanism to unlock your smartphone or use it as a payment method from your e-wallet, this piece of technology is embedded into digital KYC processes when onboarding customers. It has the power to match a picture on a person’s ID document to a selfie taken on a mobile phone, determining a pass or fail match. 

Additionally, the need for time-consuming security questions or forgotten passwords is in the past with biometrics authentication attributes present, giving the result of a positive customer experience and the avoidance of frustrations they usually face using traditional security methods. 

The Benefits of Facial Verification Continued 

The facial comparison features of biometric technology stand out within this technology, especially now as more businesses look to implement digital identity checking, in which facial verification proof is a vital prerequisite. 

Biometric authentication works by having a person take a photo and submit their photo ID like a passport or driver’s license, once this is completed via their device, Machine Readable Technology (MRZ) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) lift all the relevant information and checks its validity in real-time. Once the initial document verification stage is complete the applicant will then be prompted to take a selfie with their smartphone, which the software scrutinises via biometric and facial comparisons comparing it to the original image presented in the ID document. 

You can find out more about what is Optical Character Recognition (OCR) here

The algorithm can provide exceptional matching accuracy by instantly distinguishing differences between both selfie and ID images, including head position, age, facial hair, skin imperfections, makeup and more. 

Combined with Artificial intelligence (AI)

The use of AI is making a big impact in identity verification procedures where this added step embeds that extra layer of protection to remain one step further against fraudulent submissions. Quite commonly an individual could put up a static image of a person and match it against the given ID document, but with AI-powered ‘anti spoofing’ technology, a person is now checked for liveness, confirming eye movement and rotations of the head to establish that the person is real and not impersonating someone else. 

This combination between AI-powered liveness checks and biometric authentication is quickly establishing itself as the way forward to promenade KYC and AML checks while offering a standout customer onboarding journey.