Identy pushes on-device biometrics to combat Nigeria’s banking fraud surge

Nigeria’s banking sector is increasingly turning toward biometric authentication as financial institutions face persistent fraud, SIM swap attacks and account takeover schemes targeting traditional password and one-time-password verification systems.

The Chief Executive Officer of identity verification firm Identy.io, Jesus Aragon, says the company hopes to complete one billion identity verifications in Nigeria in the next few years, restating that biometrics remain the best way to counter the surge in identity fraud in that country.

Nigeria continues to face significant banking and digital payment fraud despite a reported 51 percent decline in incidents in 2025, with attackers increasingly shifting toward higher-value and more sophisticated fraud schemes, according to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS).

Aragon made the comments during an Identy executive roundtable on biometric innovation for Nigerian banking.

Held under the theme “Secure Identity without Borders: Scalable, Fraud-Proof Biometrics for the Modern Bank,” the high-level conference gathered relevant stakeholders to share perspectives on how biometrics can fit into emerging banking and regulatory realities in Nigeria.

Aragon stated that part of the reason fraud has remained alarming within Nigeria’s banking sector is because passwords and OTPs are still among the most widely used identity authentication methods, which are very easy to compromise.

The push toward on-device biometrics reflects broader efforts by financial institutions to strengthen authentication while minimizing exposure of biometric data through centralized storage systems.

He described Identy’s privacy-focused platform as enabling biometric capture, matching and liveness detection directly on a user’s smartphone without requiring dedicated biometric scanners or centralized processing infrastructure.

Early this year, Identy announced its ambitions of expanding its presence and influence in some Sub Saharan African markets, including Nigeria and Kenya, with its biometric identification software that is easy to deploy.

The CEO explained that just from a smartphone, a user can capture their biometrics during a transaction and check it against the Bank Verification Number (BVN) platform.

Identy says its platform performs biometric capture, matching and liveness detection directly on a user’s smartphone, reducing reliance on external biometric hardware and centralized processing systems.

He added: “we make sure that whatever we’re capturing is a real person. So, we do a lot of liveness detection, deepfake detection.”

Identy has also used U.S. government benchmarking programs to validate its technology, including participation in the Department of Homeland Security’s Remote Identity Verification Rally (RIVR) and multiple NIST biometric evaluations focused on liveness detection and touchless fingerprint accuracy.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  fraud prevention  |  Identy  |  Nigeria