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Banks and credit-card companies have a few time-tested methods to confirm their customers' identity. New applicants are prompted to enter their social security number and date of birth, while returning customers might be prompted to answer a series of security questions, such as their mother’s maiden name or the street on which they grew up.
But according to Verie, they should be adopting a more efficient approach: facial-recognition technology.
Founded by startup and security veterans Anatoly Nirshberg, Jim Drolshagen, and Hemu Nigam, Verie has developed an app that verifies a user’s identity using her face. Using her smartphone, the user takes a five-second video of herself, then scans the front and back of her driver’s license or other government-issued ID. Verie then matches the filmed face and the photo on the ID.
“We quickly realized that the idea of a virtual ID that is carried along with the user, and that can identify the user in time and place on demand, would have a huge impact on all manner of online interactions,” said Nirshberg.
Once a person has completed the process the first time (at which point she’s “Veried,” a term the company has coined to refer to proprietary ID authentication), the information is stored in the cloud, Nirshberg said. If a party requests that she verify her ID through Verie, she can answer the request within the app and “take a quick selfie.” According to Nirshberg, the engine verifies that she’s who she claims to be, then transmits the verification and her location back to the requester.
Nirshberg envisions several use cases for Verie. In addition to the aforementioned banks and credit card companies and/or processors, he asserts the app can be implemented at online gambling companies, as well as schools and government organizations. Furthermore, people on online dating sites, for example, can request their prospective matches become Veried before meeting.
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The app is strictly designed for mobile use, but Nirshberg said it can apply to organizations and activities hosted independent of the Internet.
“If a user were to want to, let's say, take a test online on a desktop, the associated school could make certain the user was indeed the student who signed up for the class by sending a notification to the user’s mobile device to verify both their identity and location to match closely with the IP address of the desktop computer where the test is being administered,” he explained.
Though reticent about internal security, Nirshberg contends that it’s government-grade. “Our security measures are largely proprietary, but I can elaborate on two things: First, we are basically holding ourselves to the same standard as a Notary Public, so our ID verification process is quite stringent. Second, our co-founder, Hemu, is an Internet security adviser to governments and businesses throughout the world, and will be maintaining the most advanced security processes available.”
While its services are free to individuals, Verie’s revenue model “varies from vertical to vertical – some are fee-based, others transactional. We'll also be based on a freemium model, with fee-based user services in the future.”
Nirshberg chose not to reveal specifics on employee count or funding (“We have successfully funded our seed round, and are preparing our second-round offering for release in April. We expect our valuation to be rising significantly as we enter the second quarter of 2015,” he said).
However, he didn’t hesitate to discuss the app’s debut in the App Store and Android Market or the company’s plans once thereafter.
“Our near-term goals are to have a terrifically successful launch in April, followed by rapid entry into at least three of our verticals in the next three months. [In] second-half 2015...we expect to expand into our remaining vertical markets and grow our user base to at least a half-million,” he said.
