Identity verification, or IDV, is increasingly important to securing our interactions and transactions, both online and offline. Specific to the digital universe, IDV helps ensure that the individual presenting an identity credential is the owner of that credential and is a live person that is present while conducting a digital interaction.
GenAI is the identity fraud and IDV game changer
2024 was the year that identity fraud went digital-first using generative AI (GenAI) to create highly credible digital forgeries, which now account for 57% of all document fraud – a 244% increase over the previous year – as reported in our 2025 Identity Fraud Report.
With this intensifying threat landscape, more and more organizations are turning to increasingly sophisticated identity verification solutions that use AI-powered biometrics to combat hyper-realistic AI-generated deepfakes and synthetic identities as a way to thwart would-be cybercriminals.
The use of facial biometric authentication can verify a user's identity against their encrypted biometric identifier stored directly on their device versus the cloud. Not only does this provide enhanced security for high-value transactions with seamless step-up authentication, but it also enables compliance with certain data protection regulations around the globe.
Financial institutions, travel operators, and governments embrace IDV solutions
The three largest users of AI-powered biometric identity verification solutions are financial institutions, travel operators, and governments. Digital onboarding simplifies and secures a complex digital banking process to accelerate customer acquisition and expand financial inclusion. Seamless travel enables border control authorities to find and focus on the needles in the proverbial haystack, while also vastly improving the traveler experience. A particular concern for passport and border control officials is the increasing use of sophisticated morphing attacks that employ AI-powered face swap apps to superimpose and blend a new face over another on an identity credential.
Consider these predictions from Acuity Market Intelligence about the global identity verification market between the years 2024 and 2028:
- The financial services industry will generate $40 billion in revenue for biometrics and digital identity vendors
- The travel and hospitality industries are anticipated to reach 263 billion biometrics-enabled transactions yielding $72 billion in revenue
- Government services – including civil identity, healthcare, social services, and border control – are expected to spend $202.5 billion on biometrics and digital identity solutions to execute 6.4 trillion identity transactions
The future of IDV
So, beyond AI-powered biometric identity verification solutions with liveness detection becoming the norm across financial services, travel, and government, what else is on the horizon for identity verification solutions in 2025 and beyond?
- Broad IDV use case adoption – Historically, Know Your Customer (KYC) for regulated industries like financial services has been the dominant use case for IDV, primarily at the point of onboarding. However, trends in user experience, regulatory compliance, and fraud mitigation are all pushing the adoption of IDV across new use cases and verticals. Some examples include remote workforce onboarding, age verification, and account recovery applications. On the latter note, a group of hackers calling themselves Scattered Spider have targeted call centers with social engineering and impersonation tactics to trick agents into revealing sensitive customer information and/or bypassing security controls. These attacks highlight the value of using IDV for account recovery purposes.
- Regulation driving IDV adoption – While some sectors are voluntarily adopting IDV to improve the customer experience and mitigate their fraud risk, others are subject to new IDV compliance regulations as legislators around the globe seek to protect people from cybercrime, misinformation, and identity theft. Plus, stricter regulations – including Europe’s eIDAS 2.0 – are driving organizations to adopt more compliant and robust IDV solutions, including the use of identity check frameworks that rely on ISO, FIPS, and other standards.
- IDV for reusable (or portable) identities – Today, the average internet user has over 100 accounts that require a password; some estimates put it as high as 240. Just imagine the identity crisis of trying to manage 240+ identities! IDV offers the potential to create reusable identities, also referred to as portable identities, which strike the right balance between security, user experience, and compliance. The eIDAS 2.0 framework provides a good model for this.
- IDV across the customer lifecycle – Cybercriminals don’t stop at the point of customer onboarding, so neither should IDV checks. More sophisticated IDV solutions provide a reverification check from onboarding to issuance to interacting, ideally integrated with real-time anomaly detection and dynamic risk scoring. And with the increased use of IDV – including across the customer lifecycle – there will be an increased focus on reducing false rejections while also keeping manual checks to a minimum.
- IDV complemented by eID initiatives – IDV is increasingly being complemented by eID schemes, including their use to augment standard verification checks, which adds an extra layer of security and integrity. This is accomplished through the availability of government identity trust frameworks like those in place in the UK and Australia.
- Embedded IDV solutions – With initial and reverification checks that create and maintain trusted identities, IDV is increasingly being embedded within larger identity and access management (IAM) and IT service management (ITSM) solutions that offer real-time anomaly detection and step-up authentication.
- IDV is becoming synonymous with digital identity – According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “Identity will be the most valuable commodity for citizens in the future, and it will exist primarily online.” Indeed, digital identity is poised for rapid and long-term growth enabled by biometric-based identity verification. From banking to travel, trusted identity is central to enabling secure seamless digital journeys. And with biometric-enabled digital wallets poised for imminent mass adoption, the line between IDV and digital identity continues to blur, giving people the ability to both secure and manage their own personal data.
Identity-centric security
In our digital-first world, AI-powered biometric identity verification is an increasingly vital component of identity-centric security, alongside phishing-resistant passwordless multi-factor authentication (MFA), adaptive risk-based authentication (RBA), and secure issuance. From onboarding to issuance to interacting, Entrust is committed to helping our customers realize and maintain trusted identities that improve the user experience, maintain compliance, and mitigate fraud.
