Telecoms in Belgium and Kuwait adopt biometric identity verification

Onfido and Accura Scan have each signed up telecom providers to use their selfie biometrics for identity verification. New tools are also being brought to identity verification and authentication by Indicio and Persona, while a pair of new partnerships bring ID checking and fraud prevention tools to financial institutions.

Belgium’s largest coble broadband service provider, Telenet, has been granted approval by the country’s telecom regulator to use Onfido’s face biometrics for remote identity verification.

The Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications (BIPT) says in its published decision (in French and Dutch) that Telenet responded to an email with answers to specific questions about how the biometrics deployment aligns with the country’s electronic communications framework. The framework states that ministerial authorization is dependent on verification of the proposed tool’s reliability for providing assurance of the subscriber’s identification, and protecting against identity fraud.

Biometric identity verification is recognized in the decision as more reliable than in-person verification at a retail location when checking subscribers with prepaid cards.

The regulator also notes that the tool works similarly to others that operators have applied to use.

Telenet also provided a data protection impact assessment to comply with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. The telecom regulator is not able to confirm compliance with GDPR, or Belgium’s national data privacy laws, however.

Meanwhile in the Middle East, Accura Scan will provide identity verification and digital KYC capabilities for customer onboarding by telecommunications provider STC Kuwait.

The implementation enables customer identity verification in real time with 3D selfie biometrics and optical character recognition (OCR) for ID document scanning for documents from more than 150 countries.

New tools from Indicio and Persona

A complete customer account authentication has been launched by Indicio based on verifiable credentials and its open-source decentralized digital identity technology.

Indicio Proven Finance provides KYC, KYB and AML checks to banks, financial institutions, and third-party fintech providers, and allows customers to share verifiable account identities with other institutions. Doing so without a direct integration or relying on a third-party for data management makes the partner or customer experience seamless, Indicio says, while solving data privacy and security concerns.

“Indicio Proven Finance makes account access seamless and secure because verifiable credentials remove the need for usernames, passwords or other personal data to verify that the account owner is the account owner,” says Heather Dahl, CEO of Indicio. “Seamless account login is also faster and easier for the account holder — they don’t have to remember passwords or keep changing them and there are no multiple authentication steps. Proven Finance also comes with verifier software so that bank partners, third party service providers, and retailers can also use the same verification process to simplify purchases and verify payments.”

The platform uses the DIDComm communications protocol.

Persona has launched a link analysis and fraud investigation tool to help businesses detect online identity fraud.

The ‘Graph’ software provides configurable query and link analysis for risk and compliance teams to use to find connections between users that indicate risk and can help them find fraudsters at scale and take action against fraud before it happens, the company says.

Fintech partnerships

GIACT, a digital identity, payments and compliance service company owned by LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), has partnered with Mastercard to deploy the latter’s open banking technology in a secure customer account verification solution.

The partnership builds on LSEG’s suite of digital identity and fraud prevention tools, according to the announcement. GIACT customers will be able to access data to verify bank account ownership, income and transaction information, with customer permission.

Customer journey workflow automation provider Lightico has partnered with financial institution-focused identity verification provider Innovis to integrate phone ID verification for authentication with its fraud risk management service.

Innovis’ FailSafe authentication software will be used in mobile authentication for financial services and consumer lending platforms to improve speed and lower fraud risk, according to the announcement.

Lightico brings photo ID verification, selfie biometrics with liveness detection, and knowledge-based authentication (KBA). The face biometrics are provided by Mitek.

Article Topics

Accura Scan  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  face biometrics  |  fintech  |  fraud prevention  |  Indicio  |  Innovis  |  KYC  |  Lightico  |  Mastercard  |  Onfido  |  Persona