ID.me attempts pivot to champion of the unbanked

ID.me wants to move on from being associated with fraud, “reckless” handling of biometrics and personal information and dire customer service and be seen as the champion of the unbanked and underbanked in the U.S., according to a new release.

The company says its online digital identity verification does not rely on credit checks. Between that difference and a variety of identity verification methods, it can increase financial inclusion and provide access to services for Americans left behind by other methods.

“ID.me is committed to helping Americans who don’t have sufficient access to banking services,” comments Blake Hall, CEO and co-founder of ID.me. His company began as veterans’ discount verification before winning contracts as a digital identity verifier for government agencies, which effectively forced some people to use it to claim state unemployment welfare during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The firm won a slew of state and federal government contracts for digitally verifying people’s identities and faced mounting criticism over how selfie biometrics were stored and issues opening an account. The firm created a network of in-person centers and online agents, which it now sees as resources for targeting the un- and underbanked.

The release uses FDIC figures which also show that 4.5 percent of U.S. households or approximately 5.9 million were unbanked in 2021, the lowest since the survey began in 2009 and down by 1.2 million households since 2019. More than 10 percent of households in the U.S. are ‘underbanked,’ additionally.

The firm set up in-person centers in New Jersey retail settings with Sterling Check in late-2021 to perform identity verification for government services.

The Internal Revenue System has used ID.me’s facial recognition and authentication for online tax accounts but ran into controversy. The company then introduced the option of live video interviews with ID.me staff, which Hall said would let government agencies “empower people to choose to verify their identity with an expert human agent without going through a selfie check.”

The option was criticized by some users for taking multiple hours to get through to, or weeks for others. The IRS dropped its requirement for biometric authentication in February of this year.

Previously, lawyers and activists had found that society’s most vulnerable tended to face the most serious problems in getting through to ID.me for fixing account issues, reported Bloomberg. However, some had the opposite experience. It has been possible to acquire multiple digital IDs from the firm simply by wearing different curly wigs, as the New Jersey man who collected $900,000 in false unemployment payments proved with his fake IDs and multiple photos.

ID.me now claims its mission is No Identity Left Behind, echoing the UN’s SDGs.

Article Topics

digital identity  |  financial services  |  fraud prevention  |  government services  |  ID.me  |  identity verification