Biometric Authentication – How It Helps E-commerce Combat Online Frauds

With the word ‘e-commerce’, the first thing that comes to mind is the online retail system and largest companies such as Amazon, Alibaba, etc. however, not all online marketplaces or e-commerce stores are bigger.

Small vendors along with them are profiting well from e-commerce. Businesses are selling goods globally without having a face to face interaction, providing a secure and improved user experience, the e-commerce market is expected to grow well in the upcoming years too. Although, lack of interaction leaves a gap that is exploited by bad actors due to improper security.

Incidences of identity theft, data breaches, and credit card frauds residing in the industry demand high-end security. Most of these security breaches are a result of unauthorized access to confidential organizational and customer databases.

To address this issue, just the way banks and financial institutions perform due diligence processes, the e-commerce industry should make sure that they are making honest customers part of their business. At the time of account registration, a user should be verified. This deters the risks of identity theft and account takeover frauds.

For identity verification, Biometric solutions is the newest trend in the e-commerce industry to secure digital payments and avoid account hijack. The biometric authentication process includes various methods such as fingerprint scanning, facial recognition, and iris/retina scanning to authenticate inboarding identities in seconds without compromising the user experience.

Biometric Authentication System

Facial recognition is the most used biometric authentication system online in various industries. Facial recognition technology uses Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to identify unique biological features. During the process, facial features are extracted and mapped into the database in the form of a mathematical formula. At the time of face verification. The features are recaptured in real-time and authenticated against the information stored in the database.

Liveness Detection: During facial recognition, liveness detection is performed that ensure the physical presence of the user at the time of verification. Minor facial movements such as blinking of an eye, etc. are identified. This helps deter the risk of a photoshopped or printed image if some fraudster tries to fool the system.

Identity verification, therefore, helps reduce payment scams as well as online frauds by identifying the individuals in real-time. The major concern that is user experience remains intact along with security. This is the advantage of a Biometric Authentication system that is impressing online platforms towards its usability.

Major Frauds In E-commerce Industry

Online biometric verification can put a halt on these types of frauds that occur online:

Synthetic Identity Fraud

Stolen fake or synthetic identities are used by cybercriminals to the onboard online platform to commit fraudulent activities. Once the scam occurs cybercriminal leaves no clue for the merchant to trace him. Using face verification technology the originality of a customer is confirmed and imposters are traced and filtered out. There is no way a facial recognition system with liveness detection can be spoofed so this provides a sieve for fraudsters.

Account takeover fraud

Face verification at the time of log in helps reduce account takeover fraud. It ensures that an original person is making the login attempt and not a fraudster. Fraudsters often take over the accounts of legitimate customers to launder their funds or to make purchases from those accounts or to simply steal the funds. Account takeover fraud could be performed easily if the merchant only requires the customers to enter the password for verification. Passwords are no more secure and it helps fraudsters enter the platform easily with stolen credentials of a legitimate customer.

Wrapping it up the biometric verification solution is gaining grounds and is a valuable tool for online businesses to practice fraud prevention. It is a cost-effective method as it does not require a team to manually perform verification or additional hardware. It ensures high accuracy and swiftness in the results. To mitigate the frauds mentioned above outsourcing a biometric authentication solution is a cost-effective method. Biometric authentication ensures that the frauds committed online are traced and eliminated before they could damage the business.

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