Boosting Access To Financial Services In Brazil

As fraudsters get more brazen and inventive in the digital information ecosystem, many companies are realizing they can’t thwart these bad actors on their own, and must instead turn to new partnerships in their fight against fraud.

In the latest “Digital Identity Tracker™” PYMNTS looks at new developments in the authentication landscape, spanning a partnership between state DMVs and several major banks to combine fraud-fighting efforts, to a collaboration to make biometrics and selfies more broadly accepted.

Around the Digital Identity World

Biometric-based solutions such as fingerprints, iris scans, voice commands and facial recognition solutions could be the key to helping consumers maintain control over their own personal data.

A recent partnership in India aims to add further biometric security to the nation’s Aadhaar system. Identity Devices Sweden AB will provide a new biometric privacy platform (BPP) to Aadhaar, essentially adding a new layer of security to its online and offline authentication systems. Roughly 90 percent of India’s citizens are enrolled in Aadhaar, and the BPP is aimed at providing these citizens with greater control over the personal information stored in the database.

Identity Devices also formed a recent multi-year partnership with Fingerprint Cards (FPC) that aims to enhance the security of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem with biometrics, increasing the use of biometrics in IoT and financial technology markets. Under the partnership, Identity Devices will include FPC’s fingerprint and iris biometric technologies in new products and pre-certified integration kits. The goal of the partnership is to make it easier for device makers to incorporate biometric experiences.

Another partnership is bringing banks and DMVs together in a public-private partnership, aimed at solving the common problem of identity theft. The Better Identity Coalition its members including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Visa and other banks, as well as several state DMVs is considering a proposal that would allow banks to access DMV databases to authenticate identities for a fee. The Coalition is seeking $200 million in funding over five years from the federal government to enable DMVs to modernize and support their efforts to act as digital identity providers.

Deep Dive: Making National IDs Biometric-Friendly

Speaking of DMVs, some states are piloting a program that implements biometrics into physical drivers’ licenses. The program currently in place in Colorado, Idaho, Maryland, Wyoming and Washington, D.C. and enables participants to store a digital license on their smartphone that is associated with their biometric information.

This month’s Tracker includes a Deep Dive highlighting how biometrics are being integrated into national identification systems worldwide.

In Brazil, a Smartphone-First Approach to Authentication

One of the key benefits of digital authentication is that it can provide access to important benefits, including government aid and financial services. Such is the case in Brazil, where a significant share of the population is unbanked, though smartphone penetration remains high. This combination of factors is prompting digital-only challenger banks like Neon to provide access to financial services entirely through smartphones.

For the February feature story, PYMNTS spoke with Chief Operations Officer Jean Sigrist of Neon about how the challenger bank authenticates users through a combination of selfies and liveness checks, right from their mobile devices.

About the Tracker

The “Digital Identity Tracker™,” a collaboration with Jumio, is a forum for framing and addressing key issues facing entities in the digital identity space. It highlights news and trends pertaining to those charged with efficiently and securely identifying — and granting permission to — individuals so they can access, purchase or transact.