Unico launched Human Token last week, a technology that turns a selfie into a unique, persistent identifier with no name, document number or date of birth attached, and is cutting 25 percent of its workforce as it consolidates its products on a single platform.
The token is a sequence of letters and numbers that does not contain the person’s face, name or document. The same face always generates the same token regardless of device, channel or country, the company says. “If I grow a beard, take off my glasses, wear a cap, it will always be the same number,” said Luis Felipe Monteiro, Unico’s CEO for Latin America. Unico, which has a U.S. patent filing on the technology, says the approach identifies an individual without knowing who that person is and without relying on large biometric databases.
Each check combines Unico’s liveness detection, which confirms a real person is present and is meant to stop deepfakes and injection attacks, with the token, which recognizes whether that person has been seen before. Unico pitches it against repeat fraud, such as one person opening several accounts with different data, and against account takeover, and says it can replace one-time passwords sent by SMS or email. It uses the same phone camera capture as the face checks Unico already runs, such as the periodic verification of drivers at Brazilian platform 99.
Human Token already operates in Brazil, Mexico, China, Nigeria, the Philippines and Indonesia, according to the company. It is sold as one product at one price worldwide, directly where Unico has a presence and through partners elsewhere, potentially including competitors. In 243,447 new-user transactions from a KYC provider in Mexico, 35 percent of tokens were repeats, Unico says. It also says that under 5 percent of accounts, the duplicates, concentrate 78 percent of fraud after KYC.
The restructuring is global and folds technologies built through acquisitions into what Unico calls the Human Platform. With about 700 employees, the cut amounts to roughly 175 jobs; the company had about 1,400 staff three years ago. Monteiro said AI has multiplied engineering productivity by four and that AI spending now equals 30 percent of payroll. Unico says it will offer severance, extended benefits and outplacement support.
The company processes more than 3 billion authentications a year and has made 11 acquisitions, four of them abroad: Mexico’s Trully.AI, Oz Forensics in the United Arab Emirates, Israel’s OwnID and Argentina’s Valida. Its revenue grew 41 percent in the first half of 2026, and 56 percent outside Brazil. Monteiro said the goal is to become “a global identity infrastructure” within 18 months.
Sources: Bloomberg Línea, Diario 21
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
