Online shopping instantly became the new norm for many, as retail shops and grocery stores closed or limited their stores’ capacity when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. The unprecedented migration to the digital world has brought new challenges to the retail industry, and enterprises must adapt quickly to meet them.
The increase in usage of digital services has changed consumer expectations, particularly their demand for greater convenience and better user experiences. To meet increased demand for remote purchases and their customers’ expectations, online retailers and traditional brick and mortar retail stores improve their business security and operations. They can leverage passwordless authentication to increase their productivity in operations, reduce password reset expenses, and provide a more seamless user while exercising stringent regulatory compliance.
However, besides meeting the demand for enhanced online fulfillment, retailers are also facing challenges with improving their cybersecurity measures. Account takeover, data breaches, and fraud, among many other crimes, have increased substantially during the pandemic. As of April 2021, the Federal Trade Commission recorded 273,034 COVID-19-related fraud cases, with online shopping as the most reported fraud case.
Ecommerce fraud can hurt an enterprise’s eCommerce growth and profitability as it can cause significant losses, reputation damage, and customer distrust. Therefore, online retailers must ensure that they are transacting only with legitimate individuals. To do so, they must review their security protocols and implement trusted identity proofing measures.
With the broad adoption and usage of mobile devices, enterprises can leverage biometric identity verification solutions that harness commonly available mobile devices to perform the verification procedure without the need for extra hardware or complex software to operate. Users can easily take a selfie with their smartphones and complete an anti-spoofing test to determine if they are present in real-time. It can also recognize inconsistencies with facial modalities and irregularities with the foreground and background of an image, indicating possible signs of fraud.
Retailers can also further eliminate eCommerce fraud risks by employing automated identity document authentication. Apart from comparing the person’s selfie to their ID photo in their provided credential, it is also imperative to confirm if the ID is genuine.
Driver’s licenses are one of the most commonly used valid IDs in the US. They contain enough information about the person and have a photo that can match their facial image captured during the identity proofing procedure.
Automated systems harness the power of digital technology and use trusted data sources to authenticate government-issued credentials. Suppose the customer presents their driver’s license; in that case, the automated system will perform the driver’s license authentication procedure. Authentic driver’s licenses have unique security features that are not present in fake ones.
For more information on how enterprises can reduce eCommerce fraud with automated driver’s license verification, see this infographic by Ipsidy.
