Background screening industry platform provider Accio Data has teamed with identity verification company Intellicheck.
The collaboration involves Accio integrating Intellicheck’s identity validation technology into its background screening enterprise platform, allowing its clients to quickly and accurately evaluate job applicants’ identity documents, the companies announced Tuesday (Dec. 10).
“Identity validation is a new profit center for our CRA partners, but it’s also a responsibility,” Accio Data founder and CEO Barry Boes said in a news release, referring to consumer reporting agencies.
“We partnered with Intellicheck because they provide the most reliable identity validation on the market. Only the best is good enough for Accio and our partner CRAs,” he added.
According to the release, Accio Data claims the industry’s fastest ticket response time, offering webinar, on-site and hosted training to make sure customers have the information they need to succeed.
Intellicheck, meanwhile, offers digital and physical identity verification technology solutions that can be integrated in existing platforms or used through a mobile device, a browser or with a retail point-of-sale (POS) scanner.
PYMNTS spoke in October with Intellicheck CEO Bryan Lewis about the increasingly-sophisticated threat of fraud.
“We’re not talking about knuckleheads doing this,” Lewis told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. “We’re talking about folks who are sophisticated criminals. And there are plenty of places that they can go.”
One of those places is the real estate sector, where fraudsters use fake information, including credentials, documents and synthetic IDs, to trick property buyers, sellers, lenders or title insurers for financial gain. Losses from these cases exceeded $390 million in 2022, per data from the FBI.
That number could be understated, as fraudsters are adept at exploiting digital vulnerabilities. Doma, a title insurance company that works with Intellicheck, estimated that the average loss on a per-transaction basis was greater than $500,000.
In an earning call weeks later, Lewis would note that the losses from real estate-related fraud schemes were in the billions.
“Fraudsters go where the markets are hot, particularly Texas, California or Florida,” PYMNTS wrote. “They target vacation markets where people don’t live year-round or empty lots, so it’s easier to take advantage of locations that are occupied only some of the time. They target the elderly and non-residents, and they set sights on properties where turnover is high. Vrbo, Zillow and other real estate websites offer a broad swath for swindling.”
Job cuts in government, technology and retail led the way as U.S. employers announced the largest number of cuts in one month since May 2020.
Among the 275,240 job cuts announced in March, 216,215 were in government, 15,055 were in technology and 11,709 were in retail, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a report released Thursday (April 3).
“Job cut announcements were dominated last month by Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to eliminate positions in the federal government,” Andrew Challenger, senior vice president and workplace expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in the report. “It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs.”
The total number of job cuts made in March was more than three times the 90,309 cuts announced in March 2024, according to the report.
By sector, compared to March 2024, government job cuts were almost six times higher, technology cuts were about 6% higher and retail cuts were nearly twice as high, per the report.
All the government job cuts made in March occurred in the federal government, the report said.
The top reason employers gave for cutting jobs in March was “DOGE impact,” which was cited for 216,670 of the month’s cuts, according to the report.
Other common reasons included store, unit or department closing, to which 17,666 job cuts were attributed, and market/economic conditions, which accounted for 11,594 cuts, per the report.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas also said in the report that employers are planning to hire fewer workers than they were a year ago. Companies’ hiring plans dropped by about 37%, from 21,102 in March 2024 to 13,198 in March 2025, according to the report.
The specter of uncertain job security may accelerate a spending pullback that is already in motion, PYMNTS reported Wednesday (April 2). Consumer confidence that was already shaken may have been further impacted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest snapshot of the labor market released Tuesday (April 1), which found that the labor market slowed in February, with a decline in job openings over the past year.
The Conference Board reported March 25 that consumer confidence slipped for the fourth straight month in March, due in part to a plunge in consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business and labor market conditions.
