Without a doubt, digital transformation has evolved routine procedures. From communication to transport and from education to the medical sector, every industry is experiencing continuous changes. The modes of interacting with customers are smoother than ever.
Likewise, the methods of customer identification and verification have also digitized. First businesses have to arrange meetings with customers to confirm their identity. This includes a lot of paperwork, was very time and resource taking.
Then online KYC provides the ease of remote verification. Businesses can check customers’ identities through online software. In this method, businesses just require customers’ identity proofs and live selfies to successfully complete the KYC process. Most of the problems were solved by automated KYC. This process was also modified to video interview verification. In live video verification, the KYC expert interviews the customers and proceeds with the verification process.
KYC secures financial institutions considerably. It eradicates most criminal and fraudulent actors from businesses. But as the security measures mutated, the fraud attempts also became more sophisticated. To counter this KYC solution providers add biometric consent verification as a second security layer.
Biometric Consent Verification
The process in which a customer’s consent is asked to process his request or desired service is called consent verification. But biometric consent verification incorporates document verification, biometric identification, and consent verification.
Biometric Consent Verification: Process Explained
Let’s have an insight into the process of biometric consent verification:
- Customer onboards on the business website or mobile app
- Fills the bio-form, gives his personal or financial information as requested by the business, the data is manually typed in this step
- Uploads the picture of himself holding a consent
- For identity verification, the image of an identity document like a driving license is uploaded
- The live presence of the customer is confirmed by facial recognition
- Facial recognition is completed by confirming the selfie image and picture on the id document
- The data on the document matched with customer given bio-information
- The customer is notified about the verification results (verified or not verified) in real-time
Biometric consent verification is the most advanced type of consent verification. Other methods are discussed below:
Signature Consent
Banks and the legal sector use the signature consent mostly. For instance, a bank account holder has to sign the cheque to withdraw his funds. These signatures are verified manually by bank employees. This also includes the authenticity check of cheque paper. In the legal sector, this method is used for contract signing and other legal documents. As the contracts are signed face to face, signature verification is not needed. But it is kept as proof of commitment.
Checkbox Consent
This is the most common consent verification type in online platforms. In it, the customer has to tick the checkbox or pop-up notification, which indicates his consent. By rules of GDPR, the policy and terms of the business should be stated on the consent declaration. The customer should have the liberty of clicking it or not. The most common checkbox consent is where the policy is written on the page and at the end, there is an “I Agree” checkbox.
Email Consent
To have consent and email verification at the same time email consent is used. A link is sent to the customer-provided email address. If the URL is clicked, it is understood as the customer’s consent. It also verifies that the possession of the email address. Like when a user opens an account on an educational website for admission. He has to open the link to successfully create his account. Then that email is used for further communication.
Summing it Up
The above consent verification methods were not error-prone, all have some type of flaws in them. The signature can be copied easily that can result in a financial loss of a customer. In checkbox consent, the customers do not read the policy completely. If something happens against the policy, the customer can’t sue the business but he might shift to a competitor. This decreases the customer satisfaction level higher the drop-off rates. All of the problems are solved by biometric consent verification. This also gives the consent proof for business. Identity verification eradicates the hazard of identity theft. By doing so, a business can process customer requests more efficiently.
