Jumio partners for public sector selfie biometrics onboarding as boom continues

Copper River IT has selected Jumio’s face biometrics and digital KYC capabilities to enhance its program-focused advanced network and systems engineering solutions and enterprise support services for the public and education sectors.

The companies will collaborate to deliver online identity verification services to help customers optimize online conversions, deter fraud, and meet requirements for data privacy, know your customer (KYC) and anti money-laundering (AML) regulations within a digital banking experience, according to the announcement.

Jumio’s KYX Platform and biometric verification capabilities can be deployed by Copper River to help expedite digital transformation at state, local and education (SLED) organizations, reduce fraud associated with legacy authentication practices, and develop digital identity proofing solutions.

“The core mission of any government or public sector organization is to protect public well-being and deliver services to citizens and stakeholders, while carefully stewarding taxpayers’ dollars. This starts with reliably establishing the digital identities of these remote users to ensure that you know, with a high level of assurance, that they are who they claim to be,” observes Dean Hickman-Smith, Jumio’s chief revenue officer. “This alliance enables Jumio to help Copper River’s federal and SLED customers identify end users while simultaneously improving onboarding conversion rates, dramatically reducing online fraud and meeting increasingly stringent compliance mandates.”

Copper River is owned by the Native Village of Eyak, and as a designated small disadvantaged business, has key procurement advantages for federal contracts. It currently serves state and local government customers, Old Dominion University, Hughes Aerospace Corporation and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

“We’re helping our enterprise customers embrace digital transformation while deriving maximum value from their current network infrastructure investment,” states Bill Halladay, Copper River IT president. “We’re super excited about this partnership with Jumio since it enables us to provide essential identity proofing services that help mitigate fraud, reduce compliance risk and enhance the organization’s security reputation — all within an intuitive user experience.”

Onboarding customer wins announced by Onfido, Sumsub, Accura Scan

Onfido’s selfie biometrics have been chosen for document and identity verification by U.S.-based fintech One to accelerate its onboarding process.

One launched in 2019, and says it provides an all-in-one banking platform to support middle class financial wellness.

“We decided to partner with Onfido as we needed a document verification solution that would enable us to scale quickly as we grow into new markets beyond the U.S.,” says Brent Baker, COO at One. “Onfido helps automate much of our KYC process and was incredibly easy to integrate into our existing tech stack, making things not only smoother for our end-users, but also for our internal operations and risk team.”

Sumsub is providing its biometric liveness technology as part of a KYC solution for French cash advance service Bling, which the fintech says has enabled it to cut its median onboarding time to between one and two minutes.

Bling, which launched in mid-2020, sought strong fraud-prevention mechanisms to detect fraud and fake documents as it grows from its user base of 200,000. Sumsub’s technology has improved its user experience, and enabled it to comply with French AML regulations and the 6th European AML Directive.

“The cash advance sector is attractive and rapidly growing, yet tough in terms of fraud,” comments Jacob Sever, co-founder of Sumsub. “What’s more, given the importance of fast onboarding in this area, checks need to be fast, while still proving a strong level of security. We are glad to support Bling’s growth with our fast and safe KYC checks and look forward to seeing them attract more customers with their young, modern, and innovative service.”

Accura Scan is providing its face biometrics to Qatar-based Ahli Bank for digital KYC checks to onboard customers while reducing the manual workload on its employees.

Customers of Ahli Bank can use Accura Scan’s OCR and user verification solutions, including 3D selfie biometrics and liveness checks, for real-time customer verification, according to the announcement.

Altron acquires Lawtrust for $17M

South Africa’s Lawtrust has been acquired by Altron to integrate its digital signature, data encryption and biometric technologies into the latter’s ‘one stop shop’ for digital transformation and information security.

Altron is paying Lawtrust parent company Etion 245 million Rand (approximately US$17.2 million) under the agreement. Lawtrust has more than 500 customers in the public and private sector, according to the announcement.

Altron Group Chief Executive Mteto Nyati noted the acquisition builds in its 2019 addition of digital identity management firm Ubusha Technologies.

“Security is one of our key growth areas, in addition to Cloud, Data and Automation. What differentiates Lawtrust is the level of intellectual property they own and an annuity base of 70 percent. These are key characteristics of the Altron 2.0 strategy,” says Nyati.

The deal is pending regulatory approval.

Article Topics

AML  |  biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  facial recognition  |  identity verification  |  Jumio  |  KYC  |  onboarding  |  Onfido  |  remote authentication  |  selfie biometrics  |  Sumsub