Onboarding innovation helps strengthening all processes

“Identity has to be profitable to the individual, not the service provider,” said Ghela Boskovich, Founder, FemTechGlobal, as an introduction to her speech during Money20/20 Europe.

Identity is the foundation on which citizen as well as commercial services can be built. However, identity becomes an increasingly complex topic as needs for connecting real-word identity with online identity arise. At the same time, these identity exchange between services need to be regulated to ensure each of us remains in control of our identity. Regulation, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering), comes in to provide a framework to protect our identity.

The development of mobile payments, mobile transactions, and more generally, mobile everything, has led the industry to focus on enrolment, or customer onboarding, as a starting point to build a secure identity base.

Identification was previously organized in silos, said Philippe Vallée, Gemalto CEO, during Money20/20. Each of us used to have a national ID, and then to create other IDs for each service we use: payment, telecom, social networks, etc. Then it became clear that a strong secure reliable ID base was essential to be able to provide services in a regular and efficient manner to every citizen.

However, user onboarding is becoming increasingly complex as more interaction is completed over smartphones. The onboarding process needs to ensure identity is verified though a combination of technologies using biometry, image recognition and artificial intelligence, along with human intervention.

G+D Mobile Security just announced a partnership with IDnow, to develop AI-driven biometric and security technologies. IDnow provides online identification using video chat, compliant with the Money Laundering Act. All the customer needs is an internet access, a computer with webcam or smartphone or tablet and their valid identity document.

For Idemia, the use of biometrics in digital onboarding is essential to ensure a proper KYC procedure, and to bring reliability to the identity framework.

Biometrics is at the core of companies offers, and also of discussions among all players. Julio, a US-based expert in identity just published a White Paper focusing on vetting suppliers of GDPR, and more globally online identity verification services.

At the same time, Gemalto just announced they have has enabled Belgian mobile ID scheme itsme to enroll 350,000 users and securely process one million transactions per month for both private and public online services. itsme provides merchants, government, and financial institutions with strong, multi-factor authentication that is fully compliant with PSD2, GDPR and is certified for eIDAS.

Providing a secure identity framework remains essential as ID fraud and theft remains rampant issues. According to Javelin Strategy and Research, US$ 16.8 billion (EUR 14.4 billion) were stolen in 2017 from US companies though ID theft.

Identity and especially its onboarding phase is such a complex subject that it guarantees our industry will still have lots of opportunities for innovation for years, if not for decades.