5 Ways to Evaluate the Best ID Verification Software for Your Needs - Ekata, a Mastercard company
Ekata is part of the Mastercard family. Ekata's solutions provide the most predictive and frictionless identity verification.

Ekata is part of the Mastercard family. Ekata's solutions provide the most predictive and frictionless identity verification.

5 Requirements For The Road To Data Excellence

5 Ways to Evaluate the Best ID Verification Software for Your Needs

The digital world has made it easier than ever to connect – from applying for a loan, booking a vacation or making a purchase. With billions of people around the world interacting online every day, how do you know if your customers are who they claim to be? Just how trustworthy is this digital identity?

Organizations of all shapes and sizes continue to fight fraud on a daily basis. This fight means that everyone deals with the chaos of captcha codes, multi-factor authentication, call-backs, timing out– the list goes on. And still, it’s not foolproof. Good customers get declined, and bad actors sneak through. It’s tough to know who to trust.

Nothing is more fundamental to an organization than its data and how it’s used to improve business. Everyone wants to better leverage data insights. However, internal data may not always be enough. The right complementary data adds context and drives differentiation by enriching existing business logic or helping you create stronger machine-learning models for the purpose of identity verification and fraud prevention.

As you evaluate identity verification software and identity verification providers, you should ensure they meet the following criteria:

  • Global database

Identity verification data is sourced from telecommunications, government agencies, utilities, phone directories, voter registration, credit bureaus, census information, and consumer data from marketing agencies worldwide.

  • Diverse data

Data diversity means that data doesn’t carry an intrinsic bias due to the way it was sourced. This is in contrast to traditional identity verification data sources that are held to a narrow set of collection methods, which then constrict the scope of identities they might have access to. A classic example is a credit bureau, where they only collect data through their credit applications, which then creates an intrinsic bias in their dataset that may only cover people who have the ability or need to apply for credit.

  • Unique partnerships – identity verification companies

Anyone can source data from a credit bureau. However, identity verification providers that source from companies that no one has ever heard of have a better chance of standing out against the competition. When identity verification can be relied upon, consumers have a much easier – and safer – time interacting online.  It’s all about improving customer experience.

  • Identity verification and fraud prevention data efficacy

The decision on what data to ingest is not driven solely by the authoritative characteristics of the source. Instead, data strategy is led by analyzing the data and testing it against customer use cases. Data must show an improvement in performance. If it does not improve our customers’ ability to identify good customers and stop bad actors, then it shouldn’t be licensed.   The authoritativeness of the data lies in the intrinsic characteristics of the data that increase the likelihood of it being accurate. What this means is that identity verification data is not scraped from the world wide web; instead, it comes from sources with a vested interest in the accuracy of the data.

  • Data privacy and security

Data providers must meet all the data privacy and compliance requirements of their country. For example, they must show that they are GDPR compliant if they operate in the EU. They must also sign contractual agreements that they have given all necessary notices and obtained all necessary consents before Ekata can use that data in our products and services worldwide.

The Ekata difference

The Ekata Identity Engine enriches your existing identity verification data for the purpose of identity verification and fraud prevention. Ekata Identity Engine comprises two distinct and mutually exclusive data sources: Ekata Identity Graph and Ekata Identity Network.

Ekata Identity Graph: Sourced, licensed, and authoritative data that validates a person’s identity elements (name, email, phone, IP, physical address) and how they are linked to each other. Ekata Identity Graph can answer the following questions:

  • Does this email belong to the customer?
  • Is this physical address valid?
  • Is the address residential?
  • Is this phone carrier historically risky?

Ekata Identity Network: Global, behavioral, and pattern-based. We anonymize and hash identity elements to adhere to the highest privacy and security standards. From there, we leverage the identity verification data for trend analysis on how customers behave online. Ekata Identity Network can answer the following questions:

  • When was the email first seen in a digital interaction?
  • Is the IP address risky?
  • Are there any anomalies / unnatural frequency of use of the identity elements?

We use these two data assets, along with sophisticated machine learning capabilities, to power our global APIs and SaaS solution. Having access to both the Ekata Identity Graph and the Ekata Identity Network provides you with a comprehensive view of your customers’ digital identity and its associated risk.

The Ekata Identity Engine enables organizations to perform robust identity verification, combat fraud, build trust, and grow revenue with frictionless customer experiences.

“With the help of Ekata’s identity verification software, we were able to successfully migrate to a completely new fraud solution in the middle of a very hectic year. The coverage and accuracy of the information Ekata provides ensured our new fraud models had what they needed, allowed us to effectively QA the results and confidently launch during a turbulent time for the travel industry.” – Drayton Williams, Fraud Investigation Manager, Flighthub

Are you ready to begin your journey to identity verification and fraud prevention data excellence?

Our identity verification solutions and fraud prevention data can help flag potentially risky digital interactions. Let’s fight fraud together!

Author

milena babayev

Milena Babayev

Director of Product Marketing

Milena has over 15 years of marketing experience in the technology vertical. Working in security and fraud prevention has been one of the most meaningful experiences because she helped organizations make informed decisions about keeping their employees and customers safe from cybercriminals.

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