Face biometrics offers critical first line of defence against rising identity fraud in SA

Stop identity fraud in its tracks.

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Identity fraud continues to rise in South Africa. A recent article reports a 400% surge in impersonation fraud from April 2023 to April 2024. The recent high-profile investigation into the citizenship of former Miss SA contestant Chidimma Adetshina has brought the social impact of falsified identity into the spotlight, while South Africa’s current greylisted status has placed the government and business under pressure to stop money laundering and financial fraud in its tracks. As the two-pot pension system grabs headlines, there is also a growing fear that fraudsters could rob consumers of large sums of money. These crimes can be stopped in their tracks by employing an increasingly powerful form of defence – biometric digital identity.

Gur Geva, Founder and CEO of iiDENTIFii, says: “Stolen identity has a wide-ranging impact. It robs a person of access to services and the ability to vote, set up a bank account or rent/buy a property. As we have witnessed in South Africa, falsified identities can be used in the theft of crucial, life-saving social grants. From a business point of view, fake identities are employed to steal funds or data from consumers, or from the businesses themselves. From whatever angle you look at it, a valid biometric identity can prevent rising digital identity-based crimes in South Africa.”

A valid digital identity also enables greater inclusivity across gender, location and education lines. In South Africa, undocumented citizens are restricted in their ability to collect social grants or go to a hospital. Even those with valid IDs spend hours in queues owing to inefficient and protracted identification processes.

Many of South Africa’s challenges stem from systemic inequality and the slow adoption of embracing current digital technologies that should be used widely to counteract this inequality. This inequality in access has real implications for identity management. For this reason, being able to verify one’s identity is more than an administrative exercise, it is an essential human right. “Whether a person is applying for legal employment, registering at an address, getting or purchasing a phone contract or opening a bank account, a proven identity that can be authenticated is an essential part of the process. Widespread, effective digital identification benefits citizens and generates significant economic value for governments and financial institutions.”

As witnessed in the case of Adetshina, impersonation fraud via physical documentation is possible, and ongoing. Even traditional verification methods such as fingerprints and OTPs are no longer enough. The technology used by cyber criminals is simply evolving too fast. Fraudsters can even use a person’s voice using deepfake technology.

“Out of all the biometrics available, face biometrics is the most effective across the African continent, because of its simplicity and the fact that consumers are familiar with it. Most people are comfortable with taking a selfie, and they can now use that verified selfie to access essential services. These selfies can be authenticated using 4D Liveness technology to verify them against an authoritative or government database,“ says Geva.

Simply put, proof of liveness is the confirmation and verification that there is a real, living human being conducting a transaction on the other side of a device. While cyber criminals can mine personal data and override certain systems through targeted attacks, it is more difficult to forge a sense of biometric human liveness.

Geva concludes: “The rise of identity theft is concerning, but it is a challenge that can be solved with the right technology. As a proven technology provider in this space, we are seeing more urgency by businesses and government departments alike to work together to prioritise the securing of individual identities and, in so doing, substantially reduce all forms of identity-based crimes.”