New Startup Footprint Tackles Identification Verification

Each time an individual walks right into a monetary companies establishment to open a checking account, apply for a mortgage, or acquire a bank card, that establishment must first confirm that individual’s id. That’s normally taken care of by the individual filling out a kind offering private data, and the the establishment matches up the data in opposition to a sequence of databases. This course of is repeated for each transaction, even whether it is throughout the similar establishment.

The present system can inform that an actual individual is making an attempt to open an account, nevertheless it doesn’t truly confirm if the one that is submitting the data is de facto the individual whose data was offered.

There are the issues Footprint, which introduced a $6 million seed funding on Wednesday, needs to unravel. Footprint intends to vary how id verification is carried out by giving enterprises the instruments to confirm, authenticate, authorize, and safe id. 

The corporate depends on cryptography to tokenize id and makes use of cutting-edge biometric scans, liveness checks, and peer-to-peer verification to validate persons are who they are saying they’re. The method is just like Apple Pay in that the private data – corresponding to Social Safety quantity, date of beginning, electronic mail deal with, and cellphone quantity — is encrypted and saved in a safe enclave on the consumer’s cellular system. The enclave is backed by hardware-level cryptographic attestation, the corporate says. Every consumer has a non-public key pair for entry, and Footprint makes use of FaceID, TouchID, and different applied sciences to confirm the authenticity of the individual.

The instruments would deal with challenges associated to Know-Your-Buyer, id verification, and securely storing private identifiable data whereas protecting individuals answerable for their id, the corporate says. The group will not even have to gather or retailer PII. Footprint can pave the best way for “a greater OAUth for Fintech,” the corporate says.

The product is at present in early entry launch. The software is predicted to be usually obtainable within the fall.

“Footprint up-levels the buyer expertise by changing into their passport to the web,” the corporate mentioned within the launch.