Innovatrics launches digital identity verification API as consumer understanding improves

Innovatrics has launched a cloud API to make its remote digital identity verification with selfie biometrics and liveness detection more easily accessible to developers and businesses.

The company says the cloud-hosted service, which includes its iBeta-tested presentation attack detection, can accelerate time to market and reduce server infrastructure costs by up to 70 percent.

“There’s no need for lengthy installations and configurations. With our API in the cloud, our clients can skip infrastructure set-up and maintenance. Moreover, they can conveniently scale their solution up or down depending on their current needs,” says Innovatrics Business Unit Director of Digital Onboarding Toolkit Daniel Ferak.

Beyond faster and easier deployment, Innovatrics says its cloud solution provides scalability as biometric identity verification transactions increase in volume.

Like the on-premise version, Innovatrics’ Digital Onboarding Toolkit can cut identity fraud incidents by up to 90 percent, according to the announcement.

Innovatrics also launched an SDK to enable biometric enrollment without integrating its ABIS libraries just weeks ago.

Fraud threat drives increasing consumer acceptance, understanding of identity verification

A pair of consumer fraud surveys, one in Canada and one in the UK, indicate growing understanding of why they are asked to perform identity verification, and preference to use biometrics to do so.

Credit scoring and analytics provider FICO found in a survey of a thousand Canadians that more than two-thirds of them (69 percent) rank fraud protection among the top three things they look for when opening a financial account. Further, almost three-quarters (74 percent) understand that digital identity checks are part of that personal protection.

More than half would prefer to use face biometrics to other identity verification methods, and 63 percent prefer fingerprint biometrics. Usernames and passwords also remain popular.

Processing time advantages for identity verification with biometrics could be a major advantage as well, with three-quarters expecting to be able to open a checking account to take under half an hour.

Customer service, in contrast to fraud protection, is only a priority for 37 percent of financial service customers in Canada.

Only 40 percent recognize the value of security checks to prevent money laundering.

A similar survey by FICO in the UK shows consumers there have responded to a fraud-filled 2021 holiday season with greater tolerance for digital identity checks.

Between November 2021 and January 2022, £15.3 million (US$18.6 million) was lost to fraud, and 63 percent of consumers have noticed more identity checks since then.

Like in Canada, nearly three-quarters of consumers understand that digital identity checks by banks are carried out to protect accounts. Just under half (48 percent) say fingerprint biometrics are a good way to carry out verification when making an online purchase. Face biometrics were the top choice for securing account access for 45 percent of respondents.

A new scheme for digital identity checks for the largest transaction most consumers every make – buying or selling a house – is being developed in the UK.

Etive Technologies is collaborating with the Home Builders Federation to develop a verification scheme in line with the Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework.

The MyIdentity scheme is intended to enable consumers to carry out digital identity and anti-money laundering (AML) checks and share them with organizations when required. MyIdentity works with third-party digital identity verification and selfie biometrics providers like Yoti, Thirdfort, Nuggets and Digidentity.

Etive is inviting HBF members to participate in a survey to help assess what they need from a customer digital identity verification process.

Article Topics

API  |  biometrics  |  cloud services  |  consumer adoption  |  digital identity  |  face biometrics  |  fraud prevention  |  identity verification  |  Innovatrics  |  selfie biometrics