Onfido Survey Highlights Trust Problem for Digital Businesses

Onfido has found more evidence to suggest that people are increasingly relying on digital services during the COVID-19 pandemic. To that end, the company has shared the results of a survey that found that well over half (59 percent) of the respondents used online services more frequently between April and July than they did in the months prior.

The trend was even more pronounced with younger generations. Online service usage was up 78 percent for Gen Z (those between the ages of 18-24), with a full 28 percent reporting that they used online accounts 50 percent more often. The comparable number was only 18 percent for the population at large.

However, the respondents did express some lingering security concerns that are hindering those digital transformation rates. Fifty-three percent were worried that their data would be shared with a third party, while 50 percent were worried that it would not be stored safely and 37 percent felt that the service was asking for too much personal information. Forty-three percent of the respondents had abandoned an account opening process for at least one of those reasons. That translates directly to lost customers (and lost sales) for digital businesses.

“This abandonment rate suggests that businesses are missing out on revenue opportunities from new customers,” said Onfido Chief Marketing Officer Robert Humphrey. “Abandoning at account set up is akin to a customer walking into a brick and mortar store and turning around and walking out without making a purchase.”

Most consumers (59 percent) are unwilling to do business with an organization that cannot earn their trust. Identity verification was extremely important in that regard. Eighty percent of those familiar with the technology felt that they could place their trust in a business that pairs document recognition with a biometric scan, compared to 67 percent for other methods.

The survey itself is titled “Customer attitudes to digital identity: meet the expectations of tomorrow.” It was put together by Dynata, and polled the attitudes of 4,035 respondents in the US, the UK, France, and Germany in the summer of 2020.

Onfido is not the only company to observe the increase in digital traffic during the pandemic. IDnow has fielded a 1000 percent increase in selfie authentication requests, while the demand for Onfido’s own identity verification offerings has gone up dramatically during the second and third quarters of the year. Outgoing CEO Husayn Kassai has since predicted that biometric identity proofing will have a transformative effect on the digital economy in the next few years.

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November 24, 2020 – by Eric Weiss