The FinTech Futures PayTech Awards recognize excellence and innovation in the finance and payment industry worldwide, and the technology and people who make it happen.
The 4th annual awards ceremony took place on July 8 as a digital event. There were a total of 24 winning entries and 31 highly commended mentions across a range of categories.
ID R&D is thrilled to be recognized in two categories:
Winner:Best Use of Biometrics in Payments
Project – Passive facial liveness for Payface
Highly Commended: PayTech of the Future
Project – Voice Biometric authentication in WhatsApp with Wittybots by SimpleTech
Winner: Best Use of Biometrics in Payments
Payface enables shoppers to make touchless payments at retail locations simply by looking at the payment Point of Sale system. The ability to “pay with your face” helps retailers meet demand for contactless payment options by eliminating the need for customers to carry cash, cards, and even mobile phones.
Paying by face, simply by taking a selfie, offers both security and ease. However, accurately matching a customer’s selfie during enrollment and authentication wasn’t enough. Payface needed to ensure that criminals can’t use a printed photo, screen capture, or mask to trick the system.
Payface selected ID R&D’s passive facial liveness to secure in-store payments from spoofing attacks by fraudsters. The liveness detection is able to distinguish between a selfie of a real live person and a selfie of a photo, video replay or mask of the real person. Unlike other products in the market, ID R&D enables Payface to do the liveness check entirely in the background. The product, which is deployed globally, passed Level 1 and Level 2 iBeta Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) conformance testing with a perfect PAD score.
Using face biometrics with ID R&D’s passive liveness solution, Payface can deliver a highly secure solution without sacrificing the user experience.
Highly Commended: PayTech of the Future
ID R&D has partnered with Wittybots by SimpleTech to launch the first in-app voice biometric authentication capability within WhatsApp for Business. The solution combines the Wittybots chatbot with ID R&D speaker recognition and voice biometric anti-spoofing. Wittybots offers chatbots for business and is an official provider of WhatsApp services.
Companies recognize that WhatsApp for Business is a useful channel for B2C interaction. It’s secure. It’s convenient. It’s widely used by consumers. But it lacks enough security to go to the next level in interaction: Payment authorizations.
Wittybots and ID R&D have developed the first two-factor authentication for WhatsApp that solves this security issue. It takes 20 seconds to enroll a voice passphrase right within WhatsApp and it can be used anytime the user needs to verify their identity. The voice is instantly matched (voice biometrics) and checked for authenticity to protect against spoofing (voice liveness), using ID R&D algorithms. In turn, users can trust verified WhatsApp business accounts with a green check mark to keep their data safe.
Combined with the user’s device as a factor (something they have), voice biometrics enables low-friction 2FA. There’s no need for frustrating and vulnerable passwords, PINs, or knowledge-based authentication. And, there is no need to switch channels due to security concerns.
Wittybots and ID R&D enable businesses to move beyond using WhatsApp for simple customer service requests to enable secure interactions and payments based on a person’s voice. The user simply taps the microphone icon to record and send a short voice message for authentication. Learn more about voice biometrics for WhatsApp and try a demo.
Thank you and congratulations to both Payface and Wittybots! Learn more about the PayTech awards and view the full list of winners here.