Technology

What Are the Best Identity Verification Methods?

What Is Identity Verification?

Implementing identity verification methods is vital for many companies today. Especially now that fraud is a growing concern. The term Identity is used to refer to certain traits and personal characteristics that define a person. While identity verification is the process of establishing a person’s identity.

Why Verify someone’s Identity?

In the ideal world, a person would identify themselves and for all intents and purposes, this would be fine. However, With ever more sophisticated banking, services and products, there are ever more sophisticated fraudsters – those who look to profit by working around the rules.

Identity Fraud is everywhere

Identity Fraud is one of the most prevalent of these methods; from simple scams such as posing as a customer to withdraw cash from a bank account to sophisticated, long-term schemes where false identities are used to create businesses and shell corporations that they invest in other businesses using kickbacks from fraudulent business deals.

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Common Methods of Identity Verification

Several techniques exist that can be used to verify a person’s identity. However, the best way to achieve accurate and reliable confirmation of identity is to use several different methods. At the very least, more than one method should be used.

Credit Bureau Based Authentication

Credit bureaus hold credit information, such as people’s full names, home addresses, and ID numbers, that can be used to verify people’s identities. This method works best for those who have well-established credit records. Without sufficient credit history, it may not be possible to use this method.

Database Identification Methods

Another way to verify an ID is to use data from social media, as well as data from paper and digital databases. Although this approach is widely used to assess individual risk potential, in reality, there’s no way to know for sure whether the person submitting the information, and completing the transaction is in fact the same person.

Knowledge-Based Authentication

This method verifies identities using security questions. The questions should be personally applicable to the individual, to prompt answers that only they should be able to provide. A time restriction may be added as an extra layer of protection. Unfortunately, personal information nowadays is often freely available on social media, jeopardising its credibility.

Online
Verification

Individuals are generally asked to provide a photograph of themselves holding their ID document. This is done to verify a government-issued ID matches an individual using various tools, such as AI, manual checks, computer vision, and biometrics.

Two-Factor
Authentication

Along with login information, two-factor authentication techniques require the personal information to be submitted before account access is given. Two-factor authentication requests, also called tokens, are usually sent to an individual’s phone or email, necessitating the use of smartphones.

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Solutions for Your Business

To learn more about how you can implement identity verification methods in your business, you can read more on the ​visionAI Suite, or contact visionAI Suite to speak to a member of our team.

The visionAI Suite provides business automation solutions using AI and RPA technology. Customer interactions, onboarding, identity verification and data extraction are just a few of the mundane tasks that can be automated using the visionAI Suite.