Proof and Socure Team to Combat Fraud on Consumer Forms

Online notarization firm Proof has launched a partnership with digital identity verification provider Socure.

The collaboration, announced Thursday (May 16), is aimed at preventing fraud in consumer agreements and forms, which the companies call a $200 trillion market opportunity.

“Industries are fighting an ever-increasing risk of fraud across their entire customer lifecycle,” the companies said in a news release, citing recent FinCEN data showing that false records and forgery cause upwards of $45 billion in fraudulent activity each year.

“Businesses are susceptible to fraud from the moment an account is opened, to every form, authorization, loan, and transfer that customers perform,” the release added. “These interactions occur through documents that are approved, signed and notarized.”

The companies note that businesses are facing an increasing risk of fraud, impersonation, and forgery caused by artificial intelligence (AI) and the “skyrocketing” use of deepfakes, synthetic identities and falsified records.

Proof’s Defend tool employs more than 100 behavioral and data signals to fight fraud in the execution of its customers’ critical agreements. By adding Socure, Proof brings its anti-fraud and identity verification capabilities to sectors that include real estate, mortgage, auto, retirement, banking and legal services.

PYMNTS explored the threat of fraud methods such as deepfakes earlier this week in a conversation with Rodger Desai, who said that even his position as CEO of identity verification and authentication platform Prove Identity hasn’t kept scammers from trying to impersonate him.

“Someone sent me a website where I put in a two-second clip of my voice … and it had me singing songs,” Desai told PYMNTS Karen Webster. “The technology’s becoming democratized quickly, and it’s pretty cheap.”

Deepfakes represent a rising threat to businesses, he said, adding that the phone needs to be the foundation of identity verification because it is often the device used to carry out frauds. A jump in business identity fraud requires a new approach to authenticating the person sending invoices, calling in and even texting.

“The digital front doors of most businesses are not very secure,” he said.

As that report noted, a lack of security has driven business fraud to a level so lucrative that sending out false invoices generates billions of dollars a year in Europe, more than drugs and money laundering.

Imposter scams were the top fraud category in 2023, with reported losses in the United States coming to $2.7 billion, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

“These scams include people pretending to be your bank’s fraud department, the government, a relative in distress, a well-known business or a technical support expert,” the FTC said.