Identity Verification vs. Digital Trust: 3 Key Differences

Organizations across industries are being hit by compounding online identity problems. Misinformation, disinformation, bots, scams and fraud are all increasing online risks for companies. In response, many companies are using identity verification to address online identity issues—but this only solves part of the problem.

Not all online trust and safety leaders realize it, but there is a new approach that organizations can take to reduce risk, identify good online users and protect the entire online community: digital trust.

If you’re unsure what the differences between identity verification and digital trust are, this article will help clear the air. Here’s how these two online trust and safety strategies work along with three important differences between identity verification and digital trust.

What Is Digital Identity Verification?

Traditional digital identity verification is a reactive tactic that companies use to fight fraud, scams and other dangerous online activity. With this strategy, companies will watch for suspicious online activity. When an online user displays any behaviors that are suspect, the company will conduct manual reviews, decline transactions, send out security codes or take other steps to respond, hoping to minimize the damage. 

Although digital identity verification is a common tactic, it has some limitations:

• Customer friction: With identity verification, a user’s or buyer’s experience will be interrupted online, and that can cause frustration. Anytime an online experience is disrupted, it can hurt engagement or turn away sales.
• Lost time and money: Inefficient manual reviews and other digital identity verification actions cut into a company’s labor budget. If these processes are sluggish, they can shave money off the bottom line. 
• False declines: In the case of fraud prevention, reactive identity verification processes can lead to false declines, which can alienate long-term customers. Any time a company stops a customer from making a legitimate purchase, it costs the company money, and it can cause an organization to lose repeat customers. 

What Is Digital Trust?

Digital trust and safety is a proactive strategy that allows online organizations across industries to confirm the real identities behind online personas—and increase online trust. Rather than sitting back and reacting to violations, this approach uses machine learning that examines billions of online interactions, connections and relationships, ultimately building trusted customer profiles. This strategy allows organizations to identify trustworthy users and filter out bots or shady actors who aren’t who they say they are. 

3 Key Differences Between Identity Verification and Digital Trust

For online companies that want to improve their users’ experiences and lower risk, digital trust offers a few important advantages over traditional digital identity verification. Here are three key benefits of digital trust:

1. More Dynamic Data

Digital trust uses dynamic data to prove customers and users are who they say they are. It digs into their online relationships, connections and behaviors to shape a full profile you can trust. Ultimately, more dynamic data tells you a more complete story about your online users and customers, so you can ensure your online communities are filled with trusted participants. 

2. Less Customer Friction

Any interruption in the online experience will distract users, frustrate customers and cause people to spend their time elsewhere. With advanced tools such as Pipl Trust, companies can identify trust during each digital interaction along a consumer’s entire journey. Rather than waiting for damage to occur, digital trust technology stops scammers, bots, fake profiles and bad actors from ever reaching the company’s online space. That shapes a better customer experience for the company's entire community, marketplace or digital forum.

3. Less Burden on Fraud-Prevention Resources 

Reacting to suspicious online behavior through identity verification expends company resources in several ways: 

• It can trigger false declines, which cost businesses long-term profit as well as immediate labor resources. In fact, a 2021 report found that 39% of consumers will never work with a retailer again if they experience a declined order.
• It forces manual review teams and safety teams to spend more time and effort digging into potential fraud cases with limited data points supporting their cause. 
• It puts extra pressure on your customer success teams, who have to calm frustrated online participants.

Conversely, digital trust technology provides online security teams with trust scores that make it easy to identify trust and approve transactions with confidence long before fraud, scams or misinformation does any damage.  

Secure Digital Trust for Your Organization

By leaning on digital trust, companies can reduce online risk and build trustworthy online spaces. Additionally, this strategy can help optimize resources, freeing up teams to focus on delivering better customer experiences. 

Want to learn more ways to secure online trust and safety more efficiently? Download our white paper, The Trust Paradigm for Online Business, for an in-depth breakdown of the latest technology and strategies for building safer online environments. 

Or contact us anytime to schedule a proof of concept or book a meeting.