ID check, selfie biometrics and identity intelligence providers look for niches in busy compliance market

Biometric screening and related technologies for know your customer (KYC) and anti money-laundering (AML) compliance when onboarding new customers clearly has a robust market, but the sheer volume of offerings could pose a challenge to technology providers attempting to gain market share and scale.

From Facepoint joining Nice Actimize and Onfido joining Salesforce’s AppExchange, to new biometric features announced by Brightwell, a new customer plan from Persona and platform from iComply, and new partnerships between Avrust and Covr, Datasoft and Vouched, the number and reach of solutions are both expanding. Trulioo and Acuant have also announced new customers.

Most of the announcements raise the increases in online activity and fraud attacks this year, and the widely-held view that many processes will now only be conducted remotely by millions of people.

New offerings

Fintech Brightwell has launched the new FaceCheck biometric feature to its mobile app to provide 3D facial recognition through a video selfie, along with liveness detection, for secure access to accounts by global workers.

A two-second video enables workers to access accounts to get paid, send or spend money from any camera-enabled device.

The new feature is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2021.

Persona has introduced a new free identity verification ‘Starter’ plan to allow businesses of any size to offer up to 500 instant verifications a month while protecting user information.

The service helps ensure compliance to regulations like California’s CCPA and the EU’s GDPR with what the company claims is industry-leading data protection and automated fraud detection.

The service has passed through beta testing with customers including Clever Credit using Persona’s technologies, such as database lookups, quizzes and reverse phone lookups as well as biometric selfies and live video capture for applications from trust and safety to KYC checks, according to the announcement.

iComply has launched an update to its digital compliance administration platform to support onboarding and authentication of legal entities and individuals with on-device biometric authentication.

The use of edge computing by iComplyKYC enables risk management in compliance with GDPR, PIPA, PPIA and CCPA, the company says.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has expanded its AML requirements to take in law firms, accounting, ecommerce, luxury sales and certain business transactions, iComply CEO Matthew Unger points out.

The company cites a report from Compliance Week suggesting that AML spending by financial services providers reached $181 billion in 2019.

Strategic partnerships

Facepoint facial recognition and “picture intelligence” capabilities for advanced KYC and AML risk screening have been launched to the Nice Actimize X-Sight Marketplace.

The “picture intelligence” feature involves comparison against a global database of “people of interest” to provide real-time risk mitigation.

Nice Actimize’s X-Sight Marketplace now includes more than 60 technology partners.

Onfido has integrated its ID document and selfie biometrics checks with Salesforce’s platform and joined its AppExchange to bring biometric remote identity verification and authentication to organizations’ existing workflows for KYC and AML-compliant customer onboarding.

The technology catches 98.7 percent of fraudulent applications, according to Onfido. The company’s Chief Product Officer Kevin Trilli says only 40 percent of bank customer plan to return to branches after the COVID-19 pandemic ends, emphasizing the importance of compliant remote onboarding and transacting capabilities.

Nigeria-based Avrust, which provides banks, telecom companies and healthcare providers in Africa’s most populous country with secure digital identity solutions, has formed a strategic partnership with Covr Security.

Covr, the founders of which were involved in the establishment of Sweden’s BankID, will provide digital KYC tools including facial recognition with biometric liveness detection to enable secure user authentication and authorization.

Cloud foreign exchange and global payment platform provider Datasoft has implemented ID document-scanning and selfie biometrics from Vouched to provide real-time identity verification.

Datasoft’s digital KYC and onboarding platform FxOffice is integrating Vouched’s technology to improve financial services access and make processes faster with less friction, according to the announcement.

Vouched also announced a $3 million funding round this week.

Client wins

Acuant is providing automated transaction monitoring for global payables automation platform Tipalti to help meet the compliance needs of the latter’s customers.

Prior to the partnership, Tipalti was facing operational delays due to the time consumed by critical business functions and the extensive financial reporting it is required to carry out.

Tipalti says it vetted multiple vendors and selected Acuant for the robustness, flexibility, user-friendliness and customizability of its platform.

Trulioo will provide real-time identity verification for compliant patient onboarding to UK-based digital healthcare provider True Medical through the independent global data sources connected to the Trulioo GlobalGateway.

The partnership provides quick and convenient digital onboarding for UK users while keeping True Medical in compliance with local health regulations, the company says.

Article Topics

Acuant  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  Facepoint  |  facial recognition  |  iComply  |  identity verification  |  KYC  |  NICE  |  Onfido  |  Persona  |  selfie biometrics  |  Trulioo  |  Vouched