Trulioo Exec Says Credit Data Will Become the New Trust Currency

AI agents and an expanded role for credit verification are changing fraud and risk, Trulioo Chief Product Officer Zac Cohen writes in a new PYMNTS eBook, “Headlines That Will Shape the Close of 2025.”

The rise of AI agents, the changing face of know your business (KYB) and the expanded role of KYB credit verification are changing the shape of fraud and risk as 2025 winds down.

We’re in the midst of a digital evolution in which people interacting and transacting online face an entirely new dimension of risk and fraud in regulated and trust and safety frameworks.

The Armies of AI Agents Are Coming

We’re going from a time when artificial intelligence agents perform small tasks to an era in which we all have armies of personal AI assistants.

Enterprises looking at that agentic horizon know they have to determine how to enable the technology or risk losing all that value and distribution. They’ll also have to establish a trust infrastructure that distinguishes between legitimate and malicious agents so users feel safe interacting on the agentic plane.

Without trust, the system won’t work.

AI and Machine Learning Will Supercharge KYB

The problem KYB onboarding has is that every business is nuanced.

A company in Wyoming could be controlled by people on the other side of the world. A registration number doesn’t take into account a business’s digital footprint or owners. Third-party and synthetic business fraud are real threats.

We’re entering a new age of KYB in which basic business screening isn’t enough. A new trust infrastructure is needed by combining a robust data and insights surface area with innovative risk and fraud prevention tools, compliance parameters and the latest AI and machine learning.

We will also see KYB agents working in tandem to contextualize, interact with and pattern-match good business applicants and bad to stop fraud in real time and with precision.

Credit Verification Will Play a More Prominent Role in KYB

At a time when KYB is everywhere, credit verification is playing a larger role in getting a better risk signal on a business.

When an enterprise is trying to assess the riskiness of a business, it might look at authoritative registries, ownership, affiliates and the business’s digital footprint to gather data points. Credit data is another tool to help with risk decisions during onboarding even if there’s no credit request.

When enterprises consolidate those steps in a single engine, they improve unit economics, the risk profile and the overall user experience.

Now Is the Time to Prepare for Change

The next digital evolution is coming, and it will challenge enterprises to find partners that understand the changes and innovate around them.

When know your customer (KYC) was the primary digital verification process, enterprises were entrenched in creating the best user experience so they wouldn’t lose customers. The same is happening now with KYB, and it absolutely will happen with agentic. The close of 2025 is the time to prepare for change.