Biometric Identification Online – Optimized Approach for Secure Shopping

With Covid-19, the trend of online shopping has increased. Since the main protection against coronavirus is social distancing, the countries have announced quarantine, reducing the public crowd. Noting these changes, business companies have also shifted online, especially e-commerce has benefited a lot from the changes brought by the pandemic. The growth of e-commerce went up to 25%, and the total sale was evaluated to be $4.28, which is further predicted to advance up to $4.92 trillion by the closing of 2021. Biometric identification online can track, and prevent identity fraud attempts in e-commerce with identity check online of the consumers buying with forged identities and stolen credit cards.

A Word on Identity Frauds

Consider this, you are following your boring old job schedule at a drugstore, where you’re thrived to work on an underpaid salary, sarcasm noted here, and suddenly a customer walks into the shop and asks for a product that is considered age-restricted. You look him up and down and think, “Um, he does kinda look like he qualifies the age, I guess? ” and give him the product without even considering that looks do deceive and the customer can be a minor all along and giving him that product can get you in trouble. Most people aren’t aware of the fact that giving a minor an age-restricted product comes with punishments like fines and imprisonment.

Let’s take another scenario in which you’re working at the counter of a huge clothing brand. You’re looking at that expensive round wooden wall clock and wondering when your shift will end, when suddenly a customer comes up to you, gives you a credit card and payment slip, and asks you to make a purchase. How would you know that the customer standing in front of you is showing his own credit card, not a stolen one? Have you run a background check on him? Do you know him personally? Had he been your acquaintance in the past?

The answer to these questions comes in negative in most cases. We don’t know our customers. We don’t know if they are what they are claiming to be. We don’t know if the credit cards they are holding are theirs and aren’t stolen. The above scenarios are given considering physical shopping scenarios, now imagine how dreadful the condition would be in e-commerce.

The Answer of Why We Need to Verify ID Online

There hasn’t been a time when digitalization is discussed and the topic of cybercrimes isn’t brought up. With the increase in cybercrimes, every organization is taking safety measures to accord with these changes and protect their organization from cyber attacks. So obviously, e-commerce isn’t left untouched. The fraudsters are thriving there and cybercrimes like identity thefts, document forgery, chargeback frauds, etc are on the dangerous rise. To build a control against this, we need a system that can help prevent these attacks and counteract the frauds happening in the e-market, along with providing safe shopping with the introduction of identity proofing. The initiation of this is strengthening a hope that in the future these spoofing attempts would stop both in the online and physical market. 

Identity Verification Is Essential to Prevent Against Identity Forgery

One may ask, what is identity verification? ID verification ensures that the person claiming a certain identity actually belongs to that person. It is proof that a person isn’t using white lies to hide his name and using a stolen or forged identity for his benefit. In this way, the above scenario shopkeeper would be assured that the customer asking for the age-restricted product actually belongs to that age, and the buyer giving the credit card and claiming a certain identity actually exists in that identity.

AI-automated world: A hypothesis

In AI, identity verification comes in different forms, with facial, voice, eye, and fingerprint recognition. With the installation of an online biometric verification in the checkout process of the e-commerce website, we can identify the identities of the users and validate their imprints. The introduction of an AI-automated system can not only enhance precision but also fasten the verification process. Facial recognition can use 3D mapping, skin texture and depth evaluation, and liveness detection. The face of the user can be compared against his government-issued identity documents, and the verification can be given based on the calculated results generated by the system.

The Idea of A Biometric Identification Online System

Biometric identification online can not only prevent forgery attempts but can also protect merchants from selling age-restricted products to minors and reduce chargeback frauds. Launching global identity verification can grow the globally spread e-commerce industry. Digital identification solutions can be beneficial in physical shopping too, where the retailers can confirm the customer’s identity in a real-time manner. This can stop online identity fraud attempts and help prevent cyberattacks on login credentials.