June 14, 2023
The growing need for remote banking services has driven the accelerated uptake of digital banking. As a result, digital onboarding — the process of signing up a new customer to an online account or service remotely — has become the leading way for banks to enroll new customers and grow business. Additionally, digital onboarding enables customers to securely reactivate their bank accounts online at their own convenience, without the need to visit a physical branch or use additional hardware.
Wultra and iProov teamed up to create an end-to-end, secure, and convenient solution that supports safe remote customer identification and verification. Through our use of cutting-edge technologies and continuous adaptation to regulatory changes, Wultra and iProov are committed to offering a modern experience to bank customers while simultaneously aiding compliance with AML and KYC requirements.
Now’s the Time to Embrace Digital Onboarding – But Security Is Essential
Given that the number of remote banking customers is expected to exceed 3.6 billion by 2024, it’s little surprise that digital and mobile-first onboarding processes are a priority for banks. Now is certainly the time to embrace digital onboarding – but it must be secure. Not just any solution will do.
With the trend of digitization comes an increase in digital attack vectors and technological sophistication, as bad actors attempt to undermine and defraud digital onboarding processes.
Fraudulent verification attempts enabled by sophisticated technologies like deepfake videos, face swaps, and pre-recorded or injected videos are targeting digital services today in a more structured, tailor-made manner than ever before.
Generative AI-based attacks – cyberattacks that bypass the camera on a device (or are injected into a data stream) – are both difficult to detect and highly scalable, making them especially appealing to fraudsters.
iProov’s recent Biometric Threat Intelligence Report highlights that digital injection attacks occurred five times more frequently than persistent presentation attacks across web in the second half of 2022. So, choosing a solution with robust security is paramount.
How Can Biometric Technology Secure Digital Onboarding?
A resilient digital onboarding process is the most important defense against growing attack vectors. This is because onboarding is the point of highest risk, where trust is initially established. It’s when fraudulent verification attempts can be identified, as early as possible – but also where trust can be potentially misplaced.
With our digital onboarding solution, Wultra and iProov have incorporated top technology components specialized in ID verification, facial biometric verification, comprehensive mobile security, persistent malware protection, threat intelligence, and more. This helps banks to build a compliant, user-friendly, and mobile-first onboarding process in an end-to-end digital process.
We know that biometric solutions aren’t one size fits all and they’re not all equal in their capabilities. That’s why we implemented iProov’s biometric face verification into our digital onboarding solution. iProov’s biometric technology assures that the individual is a real-live person using best-in-class liveness detection – referring to techniques used to determine if the source of a biometric sample is a live human being rather than a presented artifact (such as a photo or mask), or generative AI (deepfakes or other synthetic imagery).
Critically, iProov science-based technology ensures that a user is verifying in real-time, by utilizing a time-limited session code, which tells the device to illuminate the individual’s face with an unpredictable sequence of colors. Deep-learning techniques then analyze the reflected sequence to confirm it is:
- The right person (The individual matches the image from a trusted photo ID document or previously enrolled biometric)
- A real person (Reflection of light from the skin confirms liveness and that is a genuine human biometric, not a spoof)
- Authenticating right now (The illuminated color sequence creates a one-time biometric which cannot be reused or recreated validating the authentication is taking place in real-time.
Additionally, biometric-enabled onboarding doesn’t require individuals to type any kind of one-time code manually or rely on passwords, which have typically been methods for cybercriminals to take over the mobile application being targeted. The right biometric verification solution creates a unique opportunity to increase customer satisfaction and security alike.
Ultimately, this delivers an industry-leading level of assurance that the person is real and authenticating right now, ensuring ongoing security against established and emerging threats. This is essential in a bank’s defense strategy against sophisticated attacks such as deepfakes, face swaps, and synthetic identities.
Here’s How the Wultra-iProov Solution is Advancing Secure Identification
Our digital onboarding solution can be used in the following scenarios:
- New customer onboarding: Enrollment of a new customer into the bank
- Mobile app activation: Registration of a new mobile application user
- Mobile app reactivation: Set up of an application on a new device or for PIN renewal
Step-up authentication controls can also be invoked during high-risk scenarios. Step-up authentication introduces an additional layer of security at the right time – such as when adding new users to an existing account or changing passwords – to make it more difficult for fraudsters to take over accounts or extra funds.
Here are some key benefits of our solution:
- It’s great for customers: We aim to deliver an experience that surpasses past onboarding methods by being fast and accessible. Our solution is independent of platform, format, or device.
- It delivers top-level security and compliance: Digital Onboarding protects both you and your customers. The solution is compliant with KYC, AML, and GDPR regulations, eIDAS certified, and offers protection against fraud attacks to keep your customers safe when using digital channels. The solution’s Dynamic Liveness deflects videos, deepfakes, and other digital injection attacks.
- It reduces cost and manual processing time & errors: Automation is an additional benefit of implementing digital onboarding. Apart from the time and cost of manual processing, smooth and immediate customer approval has an impact on your business through increasing the conversion rates of sales activities.
To optimize user experience, we’ve strategically divided our digital onboarding flow into a series of steps. The entire process can be completed in less than minutes from start to finish, even when including ample time for a customer to enter their data.
Visit Wultra to learn more or get in touch for more information.
Visit iProov to learn more or book a demo.
