Why businesses are ready for verified digital credentials

Most organizations can no longer reliably verify who they're dealing with. The documents and processes that once established identity were built for a different era, and they're starting to show their limits.

Once an exceptional event, identity fraud is now a regular occurrence across the business landscape. Our latest report, Digital identity in business: The threats, impact, and opportunities, found that more than half of organisations (56%) have experienced it in the past year, and around one-third have been targeted multiple times.

This surge has been powered by the rise of AI. This powerful emerging technology is making identity fraud easier to execute and harder to detect. Agreement workflows in particular are increasingly vulnerable to manipulation, whether through deepfakes, AI-generated signatures and other forms of document manipulation.

While the sophistication of identity fraud attacks grows, there's also a fundamental problem with the way identity is verified. Many organisations spend hours or even days to confirm who someone is, particularly when they are still relying on manual checks and inconsistent processes.

Outdated processes to verify identity not only create friction that slows the business down; they also leave critical security gaps that can easily be exploited. The tools and processes used to verify identity were designed for a world where documents were harder to forge and interactions were easier to validate. That's no longer the case.

Businesses are looking for something better

Businesses are already signalling that they want something different. Our research points to strong support for government-issued digital IDs (88%), with easier identity verification the number one reason given for this support. This reflects the broader expectation that identity verification should be faster and built into the way work gets done.

Investment is following that trend. More than three-quarters of the organizations we spoke to plan to increase spending on identity verification solutions and processes over the next couple of years.

Verified digital credentials take a different approach to solving this challenge. Instead of relying on documents that need to be checked and rechecked, identity can be confirmed instantly using a credential issued by a trusted source and reused across contexts. This reduces reliance on documents that can be forged and replaces them with credentials that are designed to be tamper-evident and easier to validate in real time.

Adoption is still early, but it's building. The New Zealand government recently launched a digital wallet under its Digital Identity Services Trust Framework, with the first accredited credentials to follow soon.

Digital driver's licences are gaining traction in parts of Australia and the US, passport-based credentials are appearing in mobile wallets and financial institutions are beginning to explore their use in onboarding processes.

We're also seeing how verified digital credentials are supporting faster and more secure identity verification for businesses. In agreement workflows, for example, Verified Digital Signing from Lumin allows organizations to verify signer identity at the point of signing, rather than assume identity is correct because that person had access to an email address.

Find out more

Verified digital credentials are likely to be an important part of how identity fraud will be managed going forward. They address both sides of the problem, by reducing friction for legitimate users while making it harder for bad actors to exploit gaps in the system.

For a deeper look at how organisations are responding to the growing threat of identity fraud, download the full report, Digital identity in business: The threats, impact, and opportunities.