• Biometrics is a solution that can satisfy the demands of companies for new onboarding and authentication of their customers.

An estimated 3.8 billion people currently own a smartphone. With so many mobile devices in use, the way we live our lives has changed dramatically – from connecting with each other on social networks to shopping online.

Aware knows that the COVID-19 pandemic has only increased customer demand for mobile solutions, and industries have had to adjust to provide their customers with new ways to manage their money on the go.

Unfortunately, customer onboarding remains primarily an in-person experience and transaction processing, while mobile continues to rely on outdated and fraud-prone passwords.

Biometrics could be the answer to both of these modern dilemmas, providing businesses with a way to go branchless by performing secure, mobile onboarding and transaction processing without passwords.

With this changing condition, current authentication methods are hardly sufficient to protect company and worker data. The need for well-protected authentication is more important than ever.

Aware’s identity management and verification solutions are used in a wide variety of environments, from law enforcement and healthcare to financial services and enterprise security.

Aware, which is based in Massachusetts, will be showcasing its biometric innovations at the 7th America Digital Latin American Congress of Business and Technology 2022.

Its booth will feature industry-leading technology that helps organizations collect, manage, process and compare biometric images and data for identification and authentication.

The Problems with Traditional Onboarding and Authentication

Traditional customer onboarding remains primarily a face-to-face experience today. Unfortunately, this requirement comes with a number of significant disadvantages for today’s customers:

Inconvenience

With the proliferation of internet-enabled mobile devices, people have gotten accustomed to handling their day-to-day affairs on their own terms. Especially after COVID-19, people expect to be able to perform virtually any errand remotely and conveniently. Unfortunately, modern reliance on in-person customer onboarding flies in the face of this customer sentiment and serves as an immediate roadblock for customers.

Time-Consuming

Visiting a local branch or office to open an account is a time-consuming process for customers, even when you take travel time out of the equation. Waiting for a representative, processing paperwork and verifying identification documents is not an expedient process, potentially resulting in the loss of new customers. Approximately 63% of consumers have abandoned an application because of the lengthy process.

Attracting New Customers

In-person onboarding requirements can also limit an institution’s ability to bring on new customers and enter new markets. This is because rural populations can often have significant travel times to overcome just to visit a branch. Providing a remote onboarding process, however, would allow such institutions to reach customers who may have otherwise been unwilling to make the trip.

Addressing Today’s Challenges with Biometric Authentication

Modern-day biometrics offer a lot of advantages to companies looking to provide a remote onboarding process and increase authentication security.

Mobile-Based

Today’s biometric solutions do not require large equipment and hardware. Instead, they are increasingly mobile, using the cameras and microphones found in today’s smart devices to perform highly secure face and voice recognition and authentication. They can also use these cameras to provide document verification services, matching a person’s identification documents directly to the user—a key workflow in the onboarding process.

Increased Security

Biometrics are inherently a stronger and more secure authentication solution than passwords because they use something no one can steal: a person’s unique face and voice. Additionally, many biometric solutions feature liveness detection, which is designed to determine

whether a user is a real living person and not an impostor using a photo, video or mask. Combined, mobile biometric matching and liveness provides financial companies with a much stronger authentication solution than traditional methods.

Convenience

The addition of biometric functionality also makes customer interactions more convenient and flexible. With secure registration and authentication and document verification, the onboarding process can go mobile, providing a much more convenient alternative to in-person methods.

The authentication and liveness procedures are also frictionless and easy for users, requiring only a selfie or voice prompt to gain access.Learn more about how Aware is supporting Latin American customers with the Knomi™ mobile biometric authentication platform; providing them with a more secure method of accessing accounts remotely.

Don’t miss Aware’s biometric innovations; visit their booth at the 7th America Digital Latin American Congress 2022. Buy your tickets here