Canada
Biometric verification-as-a-service company VeriFast announcing the completion of its $3.5 million seed funding to serve the mortgage underwriting market.
The financing was led by M3 Financial Group with participation from real estate consultants Scott McGillivray and Michael Sarracini of Keyspire, and real estate investor Susan White Livermore.
VeriFast has partnerships with proptech, or real estate property technology, vendors in the U.S. and Canada to automate financial checks, KYC and ID verifications. The company’s platform provides real-time financial checks combined with AI to verify data points beyond traditional credit checks, according to the announcement.
United Arab Emirates
Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB), the largest Islamic bank in the UAE, is collaborating with the UAE Ministry of Interior (MoI) to enable the bank to digitise its KYC journey through a new facial recognition service.
The bank will also offer its New to Bank Customers the capability to complete validation checks for opening an account with DIB.
This will allow new customers to open a bank account with DIB remotely and digitally through face matching verification, eliminating the need for customers to physically visit a branch for initial KYC verification and onboarding.
India
India’s National Payment Corporation of India (NCPI) may be inching toward creating a single-token digital identity, according to a report from Analytics India Mag. The news was reportedly hinged on the NCPI’s announcement that it was looking for developers with deep knowledge of Web 3 technology.
A single-token digital identity has been hailed as the next iteration of identity solutions by the government with the benefits of preventing identity theft and the activities of bad actors.
Europe
European lawmakers are pushing to include guarantees of online anonymity in legislation creating a continentwide framework for digital identity.
The European Commission first proposed in 2021 a framework for a digital wallet housing a national digital identity accepted in all EU member states, to be used for any service requiring governmental ID. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for the framework after decrying private sector identity providers such as Facebook and Google.
The European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs has voted on a compromise proposal including language from left-leaning members. The committee approved the amended proposal by a 51-1 vote with four abstentions. One new clause specifies that, except where national law requires true identities, users should be able to remain pseudonymous online.
United States
ForgeRock is to be acquired by buyout firm Thoma Bravo in an all-cash deal valued at about $2.3 billion, just over a year after the digital identity management company went public.
Thoma Bravo, an avid software sector investor, acquired cybersecurity firm SailPoint, agreed to buy Ping Identity Holding and has expressed interest in British firm Darktrace Plc and Australia’s Nearmap so far this year.
Brazil
Prove Identity has expanded its global presence to Brazil, launching its product offerings with its first customer in the region, OZ Corretora de Câmbio. OZ Corretora de Câmbio brings protection and security to the foreign exchange market with financial solutions.
The company will leverage Prove’s Instant Link, a second-factor authentication service that verifies possession and trustworthiness of a phone during digital transactions, and Trust Score to secure the customer experience in a number of different scenarios from digital onboarding to digital servicing and existing customer authentication. Trust Score is a real-time measure of a phone number’s reputation that can be leveraged for identity verification and authentication purposes, and analyses behavioural and cryptographic authentication signals from authoritative sources at the time of a potential transaction to mitigate fraud such as SIM swap and other account takeover schemes.
United States
Six in 10 consumers surveyed have “duelling demands for data privacy and personalization” that begin with the remote onboarding process, according to a report by ID verification vendor IDology.
Not only do consumers want online experiences that include impressive security, they will drop vendors that do not give them what they want, it says.
IDology notes that trust has to be earned from the beginning of a relationship – when accounts are opened. The online survey queried 2,054 adult U.S. consumers in June.
About one in five survey respondents reported being victimised by ID fraud. Almost the same number said they have had a new financial account opened in their name in the last 12 to 18 months by someone not authorised to do so.
