Biometric Selfie-based Onboarding is Seeing ‘Explosive’ Growth in Wake of COVID-19: Acuity

“…Acuity projects that the overall global identity verification market will see revenues in the range of $15 to $18 billion by 2024.”

The COVID-19 pandemic is driving ‘explosive’ growth in the face-based biometric onboarding market, according to a new report from renowned industry research firm Acuity Market Intelligence.

The report looks specifically at the intertwined areas of facial recognition and liveness detection, which have been embraced by a growing number of organizations for the purpose of remote digital onboarding as the pandemic has forced them into online channels. Facial recognition enables selfie-based onboarding by matching end users’ to images of their official identity documents, while liveness detection technology helps to ensure that a given transaction is being performed by a genuine, live end user, and is not the result of a spoofing attempt that uses fake credentials for the purposes of fraud.

Titled “Face Verification and Liveness for Remote Digital Onboarding”, Acuity’s report offers some impressive numbers to illustrate the growth trend.

Eighty-eight percent of vendors in this area currently process fewer than 50 million transactions per year, but 50 percent are seeing 100 percent annual growth in transaction volumes. And while 62 percent of vendors reports revenues under $10 million, nearly half – 46 percent – are experiencing an annual revenue growth rate of at least 100 percent.

Looking ahead at where this is all trending, Acuity projects that the overall global identity verification market will see revenues in the range of $15 to $18 billion by 2024.

Elaborating further on the trends, Acuity Market Intelligence Principal Analyst Maxine Most noted that “rapid deployment” of remote onboarding solutions is a critical sub-trend in this area. “Customers expect and vendors deliver the vast majority of remote digital onboarding solutions within two weeks,” she explained. “And while SaaS is the preferred delivery vehicle, most vendors offer on premise options, with nearly half providing face verification and liveness testing on-device.”

The report looks at a number of high-profile vendors in biometric onboarding, with names including Aware, Daon, FacePhi, FaceTec, IDEMIA, NEC, and Onfido, among others. The full report is available from Acuity’s website.