In a world where scammers and hackers are constantly trying to access your accounts, data, and financial information, it has become extremely important to protect your account from unauthorized use. After COVID-19, much of the world transitioned to digital transactions, and online security in general became much more relevant.
In this situation, photo verification has emerged as a highly beneficial tool to help protect and secure your accounts and activities, providing a level of security beyond basic login and authentication processes. It is one of the easiest-to-implement mechanisms that can increase the overall security level of a system.
Let’s discuss how a photo ID verification system works, and how it can add to the security of your accounts.
How does Photo Verification Work?
The image verification process is a simple yet effective procedure for system security.
ID Documents
Photo ID verification, as you can imagine from the name, depends on some form of ID being provided by the user that contains a verifiable image. This usually is some form of driver’s license or passport, and sometimes other, usually government-issued identification documents.
The majority of ID documentation also includes some written text that accompanies it, such as the name of the person and other biographic and sometimes demographic data. This data is also a fundamental part of the digital photo verification system.
For a manual ID verification, the ID is simply held up next to the individual and the photo on it is compared to the person themself. But in a digital context, things are a bit more involved during onboarding and or transaction monitoring processes.
Verification Process
First, the user uploads an acceptable form of ID to the platform as stated previously, usually a driver’s license. Then the customer takes a selfie photo and uploads that image as well (sometimes these two steps are combined so that the person takes a selfie while holding up the ID). Then, the selfie image is compared to the photo in the ID, and it is verified whether they are the same person.
Sometimes, and especially during onboarding processes, the uploaded document is checked and cross-referenced against some form of official database as well, to verify the authenticity of the document. At this stage, the individual is sometimes also checked for any adverse or illegal record.
The Benefits of Photo Verification
Now, let us discuss some of the big benefits that can be obtained from implementing a picture verification system into an online platform.
Secure Online Finances
Financial applications and transactions fundamentally require a higher level of security than something like a social media account or similar. Keeping this in mind, simple password protection that is famous for being broken and/or hacked is grossly ineffective for this purpose. For this reason, digital banking and other similar use cases were slow in being adopted for the longest time.
However, with the advent of picture verification, digital financial platforms were able to become secure enough that transactions could be conducted with an additional level of peace of mind. These systems add a level of transparency and authenticity to transactions and help to prevent illicit use of these systems.
AML Compliance
Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance procedures require that in-depth identification details be collected and verified from users for all financial applications. Thus, an image verification process can be used to help businesses comply with these stringent policies and requirements.
During customer onboarding, photo ID as stated before can be used to both identify the individual creating the account, as well as check across databases and lists for any form of irregularity or record of suspicious or previous illicit activities by the individual.
During ongoing transactions, a photo ID can be used to verify that the transaction is being made by someone who is allowed access to the account.
Streamlined Procedures
By eliminating the need for a consumer to visit a branch, you can gain manifold benefits. When a customer knows that they can create an account sitting at home, and they won’t have to visit a physical branch or office, they are much more likely to use your service. Thus, you automatically increase your market reach by adding a digital photo verification system to your platform.
Additionally, making it so that there are no physical/paper documents involved in onboarding and transaction procedures means that digital automation systems can be integrated. This means that all financial activities can happen much quicker and more efficiently than possible with any manual procedures.
Conclusion
In a post-Covid world where the overwhelming majority of financial activity is moving to online platforms and applications, a form of reliably authenticating individuals and transactions is provided by digital photo verification systems. These mechanisms make doing transactions online faster, safer, and more streamlined than ever before possible.
