From identity to intent: Reimagining biometrics for real-time fraud prevention

By Lenny Gusel, Head of Fraud Solutions (North America) Feedzai

As instant payments and open banking accelerate transaction speed and customer expectations, fraud risks continue to rise. Today, money can move in seconds, and consumers expect seamless, always-on digital experiences to match. However, that same speed and convenience create new opportunities for fraudsters to exploit gaps in traditional security approaches. Financial institutions need to evolve how they assess trust in real time without adding friction that disrupts legitimate users.

Biometrics have long been viewed as a reliable cornerstone of digital trust, offering a fast and seamless way to verify user identity, but with AI-powered scams becoming ever more prevalent and credible, identity verification alone is no longer enough. Traditional biometric signals still offer valuable insight into who the user is, but reimagining this verification layer for real-time fraud prevention means moving beyond one-time authentication in favor of a continuous, behavior-driven and adaptive understanding of risk.

Why biometric authentication needs a refresh

Biometric authentication measures include voice, fingerprints, and facial recognition, designed to answer a single question: “Is this person who they claim to be?” While these tools reduce friction and allow legitimate users to move seamlessly through digital experiences, they were designed to protect against unauthorized activity, not for the complexity of today’s scam landscape.

Fraud is no longer limited to unauthorized access. Advances in AI have made scams more convincing and scalable, with deepfakes now capable of mimicking voices and facial features with alarming accuracy. Increasingly, genuine customers are being manipulated into authorizing fraudulent transactions themselves. In these cases, identity checks pass, but the fraud still occurs.

Deloitte estimates that U.S. losses from authorized payment scams could reach nearly $15 billion by 2028. The scope of the problem has grown so severe that regulators in several global markets require banks to partially or fully reimburse customers for their losses. While reimbursement offers consumers a form of recourse, it’s ultimately a reactive solution that doesn’t address the root of the problem. Legitimate parties are left to deal with financial losses, and there’s a real need for proactive solutions that pre-empt this collateral damage.

The future of risk assessment is continuous and intent-driven

Financial institutions must move beyond treating identity verification as a one-time checkpoint and instead view it as a dynamic and continuous signal of trust. In practice, that means unifying identity and fraud detection to assess risk across the entire customer journey.

This is where intent-based risk assessment comes into focus. By combining continuous behavioral signals with real-time transactional data in an AI-driven framework, institutions can determine whether activity aligns with genuine customer intent, enabling them to build a more contextual understanding of trust without reliance on user authentication.

Delivering on this approach requires evaluating behavior beyond login and throughout the entire session. It also means considering intent rather than isolated anomalies to distinguish between legitimate actions and signs of coercion or manipulation.

With fraud, cyber, and AML converging, shared behavioral signals can also expose broader patterns of financial crime. Together, these shifts enable a more adaptive, intent-driven model of trust that is better equipped to detect and prevent modern threats.

Keeping biometrics seamless in an increasingly complex threat landscape

Biometric authentication was designed to make digital experiences seamless and frictionless, and preserving that experience remains critical. But as criminals have evolved to focus on manipulating user trust, continuous assessment of customer intent enables financial institutions to intervene only when risk truly increases, allowing them to stop scams without disrupting legitimate activity. With this approach, intelligence is applied more precisely and ensures security keeps pace with modern threats while the customer experience remains effortless.

About the author

Lenny Gusel is the Head of Fraud Solutions for Feedzai in North America. He is a distinguished leader with nearly two decades of expertise in the financial Fraud, Identity, and Authentication domains. He has previously held leadership roles at Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Robinhood Markets, and NICE Actimize. At Feedzai, Lenny’s focus is to enable and equip the financial industry with the tools and know-how to deliver safety and trust to their customers.

Article Topics

AI fraud  |  biometric authentication  |  biometrics  |  continuous authentication  |  digital payments  |  Feedzai  |  open banking