Fintechs race to adopt biometrics for remote KYC

More than three out of four millennials are “very satisfied” with using mobile device-based face biometrics for authentication, according to a new report from PYMNTS. The report comes as a series of customer wins have been announced by Trunarrative, Veriff, Sumsub and iDenfy, plus a mystery digital KYC provider, show the momentum of biometrics for remote financial services onboarding.

PYMNTS’ ‘Selfie ID: Consumers and the Use of Facial Biometrics to Secure Digital Commerce,’ sponsored by Onfido, also shows that more than half of all consumers would be very willing to spend more time verifying non-bank accounts when opening a new financial services account.

Among satisfied selfie biometrics users, 59 percent cite ease of use as their top reason why, while 37 percent of those surveyed overall would be ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ willing to verify their identity with a selfie to improve their data security.

Partnerships and customer onboarding sign-ups

Trunarrative’s platform for biometric customer onboarding and transaction monitoring has been selected by UK ethical digital banking platform MoneeMint to provide a smooth digital-first customer experience in compliance with financial regulations.

MoneeMint customers will use Trunarrative’s technologies including automated identity verification, fraud prevention, and ongoing risk monitoring. Trunarrative will provide monitoring of customer behavioral biometrics and transactions to enable MoneeMint to make efficient customer acquisition and risk decisions.
The digital-first bank focusses its services on providing socially responsible finance to millennials across the UK and Europe, according to the announcement, starting with prepaid products and services.

Veriff has been chosen by European mobile money app Monese to add a layer of biometric security to its onboarding process and authentication, helping the fintech meet know your customer (KYC) requirements and preventing identity fraud while increasing the speed and accuracy of user identity screening.

Monese says that many of its users work in the gig economy, are self-employed, or live in a different country than they were born in, making traditional banking services more difficult to access.

“Working in partnership with Veriff, we are unlocking new possibilities in delivering a safe and efficient onboarding experience that will help us reach more customers,” says Monese Chief Commercial Officer Atul Choudrie.

Forex and crypto industry liquidity provider B2Broker has signed up with Sumsub to help it maintain compliance with shifting regulations across the 40-plus country markets it currently serves with customizable KYC and biometric video identity verification checks.

With 450 business customers across many jurisdictions, the fintech faced an onerous challenge keeping up with varying regulatory requirements, according to the announcement, and selected Sumsub to provide identity verification for onboarding within three minutes through its video service, as well as crypto transaction monitoring.

“The crypto industry has been generating a lot of interest recently,” observes Sumsub Co-founder Jacob Sever. “This means that crypto platforms need to be increasingly careful about who they onboard and how. We are excited to be partnered with B2Broker, helping hundreds of businesses tackle security and regulatory compliance through time-saving automation.”

iDenfy’s selfie biometrics have been adopted by European digital consumer lending group 4finance to help it meet KYC and anti-money laundering (AML) obligations with a quick and easy onboarding process.

Over 70 percent of 4finance’s customers are now applying for loans on their mobile devices, which motivated the partnership with iDenfy.

“We are pleased to have 4Finance one of Europe’s largest digital consumer lending groups place their trust in iDenfy,” the company’s CEO Domantas Ciulde says. “We provide innovations to meet the challenges of the ever-changing digital fin-tech industry.”

The Malaysian subsidiary of Toga Limited has tapped an unnamed digital KYC provider for its social media app Yippi to shorten its identity verification time from five days to one, according to a company announcement.

The mystery technology provider is described as a “renowned cloud computing company” and eKYC provider that verifies individuals with a remote automated process through ID document scans and selfie biometrics. The onboarding technology also includes optical character recognition (OCR) and biometric active liveness checking for spoof detection.

Article Topics

biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  financial services  |  iDenfy  |  identity verification  |  KYC  |  onboarding  |  Onfido  |  remote authentication  |  Sumsub  |  TruNarrative  |  Veriff