How Companies Get Identity Validation Right

The dangers of phony IDs and the many fraudulent schemes that depend on them loom across all industries. Mitigating such risks is crucial for organizations in which regulatory compliance hinges on identity validation. And, considering the rising prevalence of credit card fraud in the US and abroad, with cases increasing by nearly a third in 2020 alone, it pays to pay attention to validation.

In order to get identity validation right, it’s important to take the right approach and leverage the best tools at your disposal.

Three things to do

There are three main things you should focus on to master identity validation and curb associated risks:

1. Use Technology

The right technology can not only simplify the implementation process but also improve your company’s capacity to catch fraud before it can cause any harm. Simply put, the right technology is usually both faster and more accurate than even the best-optimized manual methods can be.

Using great technology that is designed to validate IDs at scale can open the door for a wealth of positives, including:

Improving the customer experience online

The risk of person-not-present fraud has risen in the race to the cloud, leaving many organizations in a vulnerable position. Vetting ID documents is still possible online with solutions that take both the document itself and the person presenting it into account simultaneously.

In fact, the process can be handled far faster than with manual inspections, helping to maintain a positive customer experience digitally.

Synthetic identity detection

Fake IDs are generally easier to spot than full synthetic identities as the former can quickly be identified as fraudulent. Synthetic identities are carefully crafted by fraudsters to leverage a smattering of real-world details stolen from different people.

The resultant identities can combine things like genuine IDs with fake addresses, real social security numbers, and more. However, sophisticated validation tools can tell if the person submitting a stolen ID is who they claim to be or a mere imposter.

Boosting reputation and curbing costs

Your reputation is worth a thousand leads (or more). Being widely regarded as a safe alternative to your competition, your use of effective anti-fraud technology can go a long way in leading new customers into your ecosystem.

As fake IDs alone have become more advanced, simply reviewing them with the naked eye has become ineffective. Antiquated techniques represent risks that you need not allow in your organization. Modern fakes can pass the UV light test and often fool even experienced employees.

Refusing to take ID validation seriously can carry serious consequences. Companies that get ID validation right go the extra mile by using effective technology.

2. Choose a solution that covers all aspects of your business

No two channels are truly alike and your choice of validation technology for each can play a pivotal role in protecting both your customers as well as your organization at large.

Whether your business operates in the traditional retail space or purely online, there are tools that can help curb fraud risks while improving outcomes across the board. Utilizing tools that are tailor-made for your segment makes a major difference in the results you can expect from adopting ID validation tech. Here are a few examples:

ID verification for retail

In the traditional retail arena, fake IDs can be leveraged to purchase controlled substances such as alcohol and tobacco products in illegitimate ways. The risks associated with minors making purchases like these include big fines and even jail time.

Thankfully ID verification at the point of sale can save store owners from serious liability and potential criminal charges without disrupting the sales process. Solutions that return accurate results fast enough to avoid disrupting the flow of customers checking out are perfect for retailers. With Intellicheck’s solution, retailers also benefit from quick integration with their existing POS systems.

ID verification and biometrics for online services and platforms

Customers looking to transact online can be vetted just as effectively as those who do so in person. Proper ID validation platforms like Intellicheck’s provide intuitive tools for matching IDs to their owners.

Best of all, these tools leverage simplistic, selfie-oriented submission flows to keep customer onboarding friction as low as it can go without sacrificing accuracy.

Risk scoring for additional anti-fraud protection

Even if an ID is valid in its own right and the person presenting it is precisely who they claim to be, it doesn’t mean they are trustworthy.

Risk scoring makes it possible to extend protections beyond the identity document itself and assess an individual’s transaction history to determine whether or not they can be trusted at all.

3. Pay attention to experience

A bad experience while being onboarded or during a sale can spell disaster for your reputation and send customers straight into the open arms of your competitors. Two primary factors can cause ID validation tech to falter for your customers, creating lapses in the customer experience:

• Speed– When it comes to onboarding new customers, speed impediments can literally cost millions in missed opportunities. In fact, the combined cost of customers switching to competitors in the US is more than 1 trillion USD in the US.
• Accuracy– ID validation can be thwarted by both inaccuracy and slow speeds. Plus, when tools rely on simplistic validation techniques such as optical character recognition alone, they can quickly succumb to a multitude of errors. For businesses that handle huge numbers of transactions, even an accuracy rating of 95% can prove detrimental. Intellicheck offers a solution.

Keeping customers happy with the experience your business provides for them is integral to encouraging them to return. Leveraging best-in-class validation technology, Intellicheck’s platform provides the kind of performance you need to win customers over for good, including 99.9% accuracy at speed.

Organizations that choose Intellicheck benefit from subsecond validation check results, ID security feature parsing, facial liveness checking, and more. Best of all, Intellicheck can be integrated with your existing POS systems, dramatically reducing adoption expenditures without sacrificing accuracy in any way.

Both a turnkey web portal solution and a full-featured API option are available for use from Intellicheck, with the former being fully deployable so your organization and customers are always protected when and where you need it.

Getting Identity Validation Right