The importance of identity verification in the new digital economy

What is Passbase for those who do not know it yet?

Passbase enables trust between people online, helping businesses build on a foundation of privacy-protected identity. Our solution equips companies with identity verification, monitoring, automation, and back-office tooling to reduce fraud (and friction) while putting users’ data security first. We’re based out of NYC and Berlin, and serve companies in crypto, fintech, gaming, and more all around the world.

What problems do you solve in the digital transactions realm and how?

At Passbase, we solve three main problems for our clients. First and foremost, we help increase trust and safety by filtering for bad actors, layering security for high-risk activities, and safeguarding the data of their true customers. As fraud becomes increasingly sophisticated in the world of web3, this challenge is top of mind for our clients. Second, we help our clients reduce losses amidst rising fraudulent activity and increasingly strict Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance fines by providing them with a high-assurance solution. And finally, we also help our clients navigate the complexities of the compliance landscape, helping to alleviate their operational burden by providing off-the-shelf policy frameworks based on regulatory guidelines.

If we are to treat digital identity as an asset, not a transaction, how you would integrate this concept within the metaverse?

Today, identity online is fragmented, meaning that people have to re-verify themselves each time they sign up for a new company’s service. As we think about turning digital identity into an asset, we’ll see a huge benefit in removing that fragmentation. The next wave of the internet will give people ownership over their data, instead of bestowing it to the companies that use it. Therefore, that identity information – including KYC & AML checks – will be shareable and portable across companies. This is particularly relevant in the metaverse, given its decentralisation. It’s not only individuals and companies transacting, but individuals and other individuals. A verified digital identity will be essential to provide assurance and trust in that environment.

What types of fraud related to identity do you see pop up in the metaverse? How can we prevent them?

The types of fraud in the metaverse are not unlike the types of fraud we see elsewhere, particularly in online financial services. For example, we frequently help our web3 clients combat money laundering, account takeover, fraudulent IDs, deepfakes, and more. The best way to prevent fraud is to implement a high-assurance identity verification solution like Passbase that includes biometric identity verification and authentication, liveness detection, face match, ongoing monitoring, and additional checks such as those for AML watchlists.

During our discussion, you mentioned digital spaces. How do you envisage these and what benefits do they bring to end consumers? How is identity embedded?

We already have a shared digital space, the internet. The way we interact with it has changed over time and will continue to change in interesting and unexpected ways. 

• Device: PC to mobile to ?? (AR, VR, Neuro Implant)

• Content: Text to picture to video to ?? (interactive digital spaces)

The digital spaces we discussed, branded as Metaverse, usually take on the form of AR/VR + Interactive Digital Space + High Trust / Commerce although they are light on specifics. The key feature we help with is facilitating trust and embedding commerce. This is happening now but, in the future, the goal is to allow for a seamless cross-platform embedded commerce experience. KYC & AML are required to do this, and our role is to provide an infrastructure.

What’s next for Passbase?

We’re excited to be launching the next evolution of our product, Passbase Enterprise, that meets the needs of our customers at the intersection of compliance and identity verification. With this new system, clients will be able to customise multiple verification flows to match their KYC and AML policies across industries, geographies, and risk profiles. This flips the traditional workflow-based approach to KYC policy management by replacing complex decision trees with the end goal they aim to meet: the policies themselves. Follow us on social to stay tuned for updates!

About Dave McGibbon

Dave McGibbon is Co-Founder and CEO of Passbase, a leader in digital identity verification. Passbase provides identity verification infrastructure that helps companies solve KYC needs in a compliant, privacy-oriented, and user-centric way. By building a trust infrastructure for the internet, Passbase keeps businesses compliant and secure, and end users safe.