Onfido

Identity verification for a remote world

Onfido uses a hybrid of AI and human experts to verify identity online based on a combination of a person’s government-issued ID and their facial biometrics. Onfido solutions offer a great deal of flexibility to help businesses address the conflict between risk and growth: how to protect their reputation and revenue while offering a smooth customer experience. Key use cases include identity verification, driver registration, fraud detection and age verification. Focus industries include banking and financial services, gaming, telecommunications, transport, healthcare and retail.

Document verification

An Onfido identity verification begins with a person’s government-issued ID. The user submits a photo of the front and back of their ID document, which Onfido analyses using a combination of machine learning and human analysts to determine if it is valid and genuine. Onfido supports over 2,500 identity document types from 195 countries, with support for multiple scripts and languages. Onfido Document Verification detects up to 98.7% of ID fraud attempts, and as fraud methods become more sophisticated, Onfido’s technology continually evolves and improves.

To save users time and reduce data errors, Onfido can autofill sign-up forms by extracting data from the ID document using OCR.

Biometric analysis

To build even more certainty around identity, the next step after document verification is making sure the person on the ID document is actually the person who submitted it. Biometrics adds a layer of protection against stolen IDs and impersonation attacks. Onfido offers different levels of service for achieving this. At the basic level, the user takes and submits a selfie, and Onfido uses advanced facial scanning to compare their facial biometrics to the photo on the ID.

For an added layer of security to protect against new, sophisticated fraud techniques, video is used to perform a liveness check to verify that the user is physically present. The user takes and submits a short video of themself performing a movement and reading three randomly generated numbers aloud.

Flexible and layered solutions

Onfido offers businesses flexibility in how much security to apply in order to find the right balance between fraud risk appetite and the ideal customer experience. Document verification confirms that the identity document is and genuine.

For the most complete identity verification, they can layer biometrics on top of document verification to ensure that the person trying to access their platform is the actual owner of the document and is physically present. They can even decide on a per user basis how to proceed with an identity check. For example, faced with a user from a high risk region, they can choose video for the biometric analysis. For lower risk transactions, they can specify selfie.