Data Brief: 79 Percent Of Businesses Rate Security Over Growth In Authentication

In the vicinity of 40 billion records were filched from social platforms last year, showing a vast downside to current online growth. It explains why PYMNTS researchers found that 43 percent of businesses intend to invest in digital authentication solutions, and almost 80 percent say they will trade growth for security while integrating better authentication tech.

PYMNTS’ June 2021 report, The Next Wave: Business Adoption Of Digital Identity Protection, an Equifax collaboration, based on a recent survey of over 300 auto dealers, banks, credit unions and alternative/P2P lenders, notes that “as identity verification and authentication become areas of focus for organizations, businesses are aware that they have problems in these areas. Many are planning to invest in solutions that will help them improve in response.”

Fully 79 percent of respondents will increase the security of digital transactions, “even if it means acquiring fewer new customers. This opinion is more prevalent among businesses located in small towns and rural areas (defined as having fewer than 250,000 inhabitants) at 86 percent, and in cities (defined as having between 250,000 and one million inhabitants) at 79 percent,” per the report.

Intense interest in these solutions is warranted, as the findings also indicate that digital authentication still has a number of vulnerabilities to work out, as customers’ digital savvy, internal challenges and lack of financial resources can all slow the adoption of digital ID tech.

“Fifty-four percent of P2P lenders that plan to invest believe that digital authentication processes have led to the creation of false identities compared to 43 percent of auto dealers,” per the report.

A potentially troubling data point looks at internal struggles that pertain to getting signoff on new digital authentication solutions. According to The Next Wave, 55 percent of businesses “admit that poor coordination between fraud and security strategies and customer-facing operations prevents identity verification and authentication processes from becoming more efficient.” Meanwhile, 45 percent of firms in business for more than 30 years say that their fraud and security are tightly coordinated with customer-facing operations.