Visa and Proof Team to Bolster Digital ID Verification

Visa has launched a partnership with compliance and fraud prevention platform Proof.

The collaboration is designed to provide verified identities to secure transactions across “high value or high-risk payments,” as well as digital commerce, agreements and banking, per a Thursday (Oct. 23) news release.

“Trusted digital identity is the next frontier for enabling secure commerce. We’re connecting Visa’s global network and payments innovations with Proof’s platform to fundamentally transform how identity is used in all types of transactions,” said Daniel Sanford, senior vice president, Global Products and Initiatives at Visa, said in the release.

“We will not only enhance fraud prevention for our clients in countless new flows, but also unlock a new era of identity-verified payments that will help drive higher acceptance rates in digital commerce and better consumer experiences.”

As the companies note in the news release, the threat of fraud and identity theft continue to rise amid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), which make it much easier to falsify records or impersonate someone. The companies say their partnership marries the power of Visa’s payment network with Proof’s identity authorization network.

“Similar to how the EMV chip changed the payment industry by providing cryptographic proof that the card presented is authentic, Proof’s Certify is bringing the same paradigm to everything else,” the release said, calling Certify the “EMV chip for digital identity.”

Visa marked a “$1 billion fraud-disruption milestone in September,” PYMNTS wrote Wednesday, an achievement marking its efforts to fend off attempted scams before they hit consumers.

“The only way to fight bad AI is with even better AI,” Michael Jabbara, senior vice president and head of payment ecosystem risk and control at Visa, told PYMNTS in an interview.

Fraudsters “use these tools to really expand their scope so they can target more victims than ever before and to do so in a much more rapid way … because they can automate a lot of the tasks associated with sending out the emails or fake websites,” he added.

These efforts are happening at a time when, as covered here Wednesday, insufficient digital identity systems are costing companies nearly $95 billion in revenue each year.

“The damage isn’t limited to fraud losses,” PYMNTS wrote. “It’s missed growth, false declines, regulatory exposure and eroded customer trust—all hidden taxes of complacency in a hyperconnected economy.”

The $95 billion figure comes from “The Hidden Costs of ‘Good Enough’: Identity Verification in the Age of Bots and Agents,” a collaboration between PYMNTS Intelligence and Trulioo. That research also shows that while 96% of companies say they can detect harmful bots, close to 60% of these firms contend with bot-driven fraud.

“The disconnect between perception and performance is costing companies billions of dollars,” PYMNTS wrote.