Knowing who you’re dealing with online is critical if you’re taking transaction risk. Digital identity is tough. To address that challenge - and it is a challenge - relying parties, those who take on risk, employ two broad categories of technology: active tools that require user interaction and passive network-based approaches.

When the user is required to explicitly provide identifying information, we use the interactive approach. The merchant or lender or website owner asks for user IDs, passwords, perhaps data generated by multi-factor authentication techniques such as biometrics, or one time passwords generated by an app or a hardware key.

If you’re an ecommerce merchant or an entity trying to sell something online - lenders included - you don’t want to ask the customer to do more than absolutely necessary to complete a good sale. Transactional friction is deadly to revenues and a main cause of shopping cart abandonment.

So, you use passive approaches that examine whatever data the customer’s device can provide. Device fingerprinting, behavioral analytics, rules engines, machine learning, and the past behavior of card numbers are among the portfolio of decisioning tools that do not interfere with the user experience.

Data is the foundation of the passive approach. In this podcast, George speaks with Ajay Andrews, Senior Director, Product, at Whitepages Pro, a data provider and analytics firm about identity verification and how the linkage of key data items influences decisioning. It turns out that particular pairs are strong indicators of potential fraud. 

We discuss where the data linkage approach fits in the overall portfolio, what drives merchants to adopt, and how the tool is integrated into automated decisioning and case management.

Direct download: IDVerification_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:04pm EDT

Alexa. Siri. Cortana. We’re talking to or at our machines. I walk into my office and say “Hey Google, what’s the weather?” or “Hey Google, when’s my first appointment?” When I’m driving in a strange town, it’s “hey Google, navigate to the [fill in the blank] hotel.”

This kind of hands-free access to information is hugely helpful and hugely popular. But there’s a long way to go toward a general purpose voice interface for every task we want to accomplish.

That said, we’re getting there. In this conversation with Central 1’s Alex Chan, we discuss the process of voice-enabling access to the high volume queries that credit union members make, i.e. balance inquiries, balance transfers, etc.

We cover what it takes to build an Alexa skill, the code that links Alexa’s natural language processing to the underlying application that executes the action.

Voice design, the process of imagining and codifying how the user interaction proceeds, is at the heart of a successful voice-enablement project. Alex takes us through that process. It sounds like fun.

While payments are a tiny fraction of today’s voice-based interactions, they’re coming along, too. Better design and broader participation is needed. As a recent (failed) demo proved, Siri can’t send me money if I’m not an Apple Pay Cash user.

Take a listen and get in touch if you've questions or comments. We'd love to hear from you!

 

Direct download: VoiceInterface_mixdown.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:51pm EDT

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