Melissa UK Team | 2022, ID Document Verification, United Kingdom

Digital Identity practices have taken their toll over the past few years offering a range of new benefits for businesses, especially now as we continue to move toward an online world. Unfortunately, the continuing surge in fraudulent activity has caused strain on sectors trying to grow and adapt in the digital space. In the UK alone, over £138 billion a year is lost to fraudulent activity, and this is set to increase with online transactions and engagement becoming common.

Businesses have accelerated their efforts to look for tech-forward solutions to combat fraud on a daily scale as standard or traditional methods, such as physical ID checks just aren’t cutting it anymore. Here are 10 reasons why

1. Time

First and foremost is time, performing manual ID checks can be very lengthy taking days to weeks which causes a lot of inconvenience for new customers trying to open accounts or apply for products. Nowadays we expect services to be performed in minimal time or businesses risk losing that customer.

Digital identity verification can be performed in a matter of seconds and is as easy as a 1-2-3 step process, this gives an overall enhanced customer experience, providing faster onboarding and identity checking methods.  

2. Convenience 

The second reason is convenience, while time may be an essence, having to travel to a location for a manual ID check can also be frustrating. Digital id verification can be done in the pleasure of your own home all by taking a photo of your chosen ID document, taking a selfie, and then performing a few head movements, which then is automatically submitted generating a pass or fail result in seconds. 

3. Accuracy

One primary floor that separates digital document verification from the manual is the accuracy of verification. Today we see its features being able to verify over 3000 identity documents and with the use of artificial intelligence and MRZ technology, being able to capture and extract crucial information needed for verification.

Visual: Can determine the type of ID document presented which then compares it to the same sample type. It then checks for specific segments known as ‘visual patterns for matches’

Sanity: The metadata in the document is also checked to ensure the ID has not expired e.g., the issue date is consistent with the dates the document type was in use.

Consistency: Consistency is also checked within all ID documents presented where cross-references are made against a library to ensure data in an ICAO passport is consistent against the data in the rest of the document. 

4. Document Tampering

Fake ID or tampering with ID documents have always been an ongoing issue and can go undetected by the naked eye but tampering with a document often leaves artefacts or physical signs which is picked up by digital document verification technology, recognising it as inconsistent with a genuine image. 

Smart recognition of tampering is used by mathematics and machine learning to automatically detect and localise parts of an image that are altered giving confidence that only genuine ID documents are passing through your systems. 

5. Cost

Another important consideration is cost, using manual ID checks to verify the identity of a person is often an expensive resource when compared to digital document verification where a business can be up and running in a matter of minutes and can be verifying ID’s 24-hours a day at a rate that far exceeds a manual team and cost rate that is far below performing manual checks. 

6. Customer Experience

Today, customers are expecting more from businesses, and it’s those businesses that deliver the most, and often lead. The obvious factor is that waiting days to weeks to get your identity verified is now gone, it’s now in seconds, and in the comfort of your own home from an ID mobile app. Another consideration is that it’s straightforward, one ID document, one selfie, one liveness check, done. 

Businesses can embed all of this into their customer journey or onboarding stages that are flexible to their needs and your end-user to constantly deliver standout customer experiences.

7. Scalability

Digital document verification offers the flexibility to scale up on the number of checks needed or down when business slows. This is often simply automated. Manual checks, on the other hand, can be a complex task to handle, let’s say a business needs to ramp up its compliance team or a number of staff to perform ID checks, this can be a hefty investment in time and staff training not to say scaling on demand is never easy.

This is the same for scaling down, where if a business experiences slower times, it may find itself overstaffed for manual verification.

8. Maintenance and Availability 

Manual Identity verification personnel often require ongoing support and training to stay on top of fraudulent activity, and quite often manual verification teams may have to work in groups or collaborate if they do come across potentially fraudulent activity on a case-by-case basis which can often cause ‘downtime’

Digital ID document verification is very much the opposite, the technology is always receiving updates, and added features to stay on top of new fraudulent angles. In addition, because digital id document verification is run on cloud servers in regional locations, it eliminates downtime drastically.

9. Fraud detection

Having a physical person checking IDs can be adamant enough for a business depending on the nature of your products and customer journey but it still doesn’t compare to the modernised digital verification process where AI, machine learning and biometrics are at the forefront stay one step ahead when performing KYC checks. This stops potential tampering, spoofing or other fraudulent behaviour that may arise in the future.

10. Confidence

Lastly and most importantly is confidence, this puts all the above points into perspective, assuring that investing in digital ID document verification technology will deliver the very best in not only customer onboarding but safeguarding businesses from fraudulent activity and KYC processes. This gives confidence to any business within a given sector, regardless of the threats they face. They can continue to grow without drawbacks and know that ID document verification technology will scale with them and continue to evolve so that it can keep organisations one step ahead from new fraudulent activity as we further on into more online practices and know your customer (KYC) compliance measures.

Find out more about how ID Document Verification Works here