Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Identy.io

Biometrics as the key to ensuring digital financial security worldwide

Marta Gomar — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 15:05:10 +0000

Over the past few years, the internet has become one of the main tools facilitating financial inclusion. So much so that financial transactions conducted remotely now far outnumber those conducted in person. For example, in Colombia, it is estimated that eight out of ten financial transactions are now conducted online, according to data from the Financial Superintendency.

In Peru, the situation is very similar. At a time of rapid digitalization in the country—driven, among other factors, by more than $80 million in financing from the Inter-American Development Bank to promote inclusion and public participation in the digital economy—it is estimated that nine out of ten users of financial services in Peru already use digital wallets as an everyday tool.

Although this trend toward an increasingly interconnected world has significantly heightened many people’s interest in technology and the myriad possibilities it offers, the reality is that it has also multiplied the risks faced by both users and public and private entities alike. In Colombia alone, for example, so far in 2026 there have already been more than 5,000 cases of fraud and identity theft in the financial sector, in addition to the more than 62,000 reports of cybercrimes from last year.

Although in some cases the end user remains the entry point for these crimes—according to the Superintendency of Banking, Insurance, and Pension Fund Administrators, nearly half of users still store their banking passwords on their mobile phones—the very advancement of technology, particularly artificial intelligence, has multiplied the risks of these crimes occurring. Indeed, due to the exponential growth of cases involving the use of digital doubles or deepfakes, traditional security measures—such as passwords or security codes sent via SMS to the user’s cell phone—are no longer sufficient.

Biometric Technology as an Additional Layer of Security Against Fraud

In a context where it is becoming increasingly necessary to verify a user’s identity remotely—and to do so with the highest possible standards of security and efficiency—biometrics is establishing itself as an essential tool for users and both public and private entities. This technology, which quickly and easily captures a user’s fingerprints or facial features, has already become an additional layer of security that complements existing measures and directly helps reduce cases of fraud involving theft or identity theft.

In this regard, Identy.io has opted to develop on-device technology, meaning it uses the user’s own mobile device to capture biometric information, with all data stored on the device itself under the strictest security standards. This not only enhances user security—since users no longer need to visit their bank’s offices, for example, to complete any transactions—but also has a direct impact on financial institutions’ bottom line, as they no longer need to invest large sums of money in third-party servers or cloud infrastructure to store their users’ data. Thanks to this on-device architecture, facial data or fingerprints never leave the user’s phone, making security breaches on servers virtually impossible, while also reducing reliance on constant connectivity—a factor that is particularly relevant in areas where internet access is limited.

The entire biometric validation process begins with the onboarding process, during which your digital credentials are generated. The system captures the user’s fingerprint or facial feature data and stores it on their mobile device using the world’s most stringent security and encryption protocols. From then on, this information can be used to verify your identity by querying a centralized database (1:N) and ensuring that the person carrying out a specific transaction—financial, for example—is who they claim to be (1:1). Additionally, Identy.io’s biometric solutions enable the issuance of QR codes (BioCode), which the user can present as credentials and which contain all their personal information, allowing them to control what data they share, when, and with whom at all times. This critical data can also be stored in a digital wallet (ID Wallet) under the most stringent encryption standards on the market.

At a time when it is increasingly common to access financial services through tools such as digital wallets or mobile apps, it is essential to ensure that there is no unauthorized access to users’ critical information. Only through this additional layer of security can the financial well-being of the population be guaranteed.

La entrada Biometrics as the key to ensuring digital financial security worldwide se publicó primero en identy.io.

Identy.io achieves top NIST biometric certification results

Marta Gomar — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 10:49:11 +0000

Cases of fraud caused by identity theft continue to grow worldwide. In the US alone, detected cases of identity theft increased by 148% between April 2024 and March 2025, according to the “2025 Trends in Identity Report” published by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). This study also reveals that in 53% of cases involving identity theft, control was taken directly over existing accounts, both bank and social media, while in 36% of attacks, the stolen information was used to create new accounts, for example, by issuing new credit cards linked to the victims.

In a context where technological advancement has become both an opportunity for growth and a threat, AI has become one of the tools of choice for criminals to carry out their attacks, biometrics has become a new security standard that helps both users and entities prevent the theft of identities and personal information of all kinds, email addresses, passwords, even Social Security numbers.

Biometrics as a shield to reduce the impact of cyberattacks

Biometrics has proven to be one of the main allies in protecting against fraud, offering an additional layer of security against personal information theft. By being able to unequivocally validate that the user attempting to access a particular service is who they say they are and not, for example, a digital twin created by artificial intelligence, the chances of unauthorized intrusion are reduced exponentially. By including fingerprint detection in verification systems, this risk is reduced to virtually zero.

But for these identity verification systems to be truly effective and secure, they must meet a series of minimum security requirements. There is no point in having a biometric validation system if it is not particularly accurate, if it is not capable of detecting identity theft caused by, for example, artificial intelligence, or if the biometric data used to verify the user’s identity is stored on insecure servers or in the cloud.

NIST certification as a validation tool for biometric solutions

Although fingerprint identity verification is essential for reducing fraud, the truth is that this system must comply with certain industry standards in order to be truly reliable and effective. In the US, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is responsible for establishing the necessary standards to verify the reliability of biometric solutions, and periodically conducts specific tests to ensure their quality and reliability, based on the patented fingerprint template (PFTIII). This test has been in place since October 2019 and is considered the most important benchmark for evaluating the performance and accuracy of fingerprint templates used for 1:1 matching (i.e., to confirm that the user is who they say they are).

Identy.io received its first validation from this entity in April. Although the tests carried out are specifically designed to evaluate fingerprint comparison engines using images captured on physical (tactile) scanners, Identy.io’s technology demonstrated its accuracy in both tactile and non-tactile environments, offering greater versatility.

In these initial tests, the NIST PFT III evaluation revealed Identy.io’s leadership in its sector by enabling the user identity verification process on their own mobile phone, using only its camera and flash, without the need for physical scanners, which is especially important in places or situations where using these expensive devices is unfeasible or of little use.

In a new edition of the tests carried out by NIST, Identy.io’s solutions have improved significantly in all the indicators evaluated, once again demonstrating the company’s leadership in US biometrics. As the PFT III tests only take into account fingerprints captured by scanners, the NIST results confirm that the hybrid design of Identy.io’s solutions, that is, using both physical scanners and users’ mobile phones to capture their biometric credentials, positions the company as a global leader in interoperability, something that is increasingly important as private and government institutions continue to modernize their systems.

How NIST testing works, the benchmark for biometric quality in the US

To evaluate the accuracy of the tests that have confirmed Identy.io as one of the most reliable biometric providers in the US, PFT III tests are used, which mainly take into account fingerprint comparison algorithms. These tests evaluate the software used to determine whether fingerprints belong to the same person, i.e., they perform a 1:1 verification. To do this, they follow a standardized methodology to ensure that the results obtained remain objective and comparable.

In order to measure accuracy, NIST uses government database sets, to which companies such as Identy.io do not have access, so that the rigor of the tests can be guaranteed. Similarly, the algorithms cannot have been trained in advance.

With this second consecutive recognition, NIST certifies that Identy.io offers a complete biometric solution, combining both secure mobile capture with its functionality using fingerprints captured by a scanner. The company’s matcher works not only in 1:1 tests, but also in 1:N tests, that is, it can determine who the user is by comparing their biometric features within a database, and is fully usable on mobile devices, allowing for integration into digital identification applications in offline environments, on the device itself, or in the field.

References

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – NIST Biometric Evaluations
Identity Theft Resource Center – Identity Theft Resource Center (2025). 2025 Trends in Identity Report.
Federal Bureau of Investigation – FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Division. Biometric Specifications for Fingerprint Systems.

La entrada Identy.io achieves top NIST biometric certification results se publicó primero en identy.io.