GM Test Drives Blockchain ID Verification

General Motors’ financing unit, General Motors Financial, is teaming up with Spring Labs, a blockchain company, to create identity verification solutions.

In a press release issued on Tuesday (Feb. 12), GM Financial said the partnership will improve data management standards to help address issues such as identity verification and synthetic identity fraud, which are critical in the auto financing industry.

“As the captive finance arm for General Motors and one of the world’s largest auto finance providers, we are continually innovating and evolving our fraud prevention and detection capabilities to better serve and protect our customers and dealers,” said Mike Kanarios, chief strategy officer at GM Financial, in the press release. “Today’s announcement underscores our commitment and investment to advance these efforts, and we are pleased to collaborate with Spring Labs as a member of the SFIP program.”

GM Financial is joining The Spring Founding Industry Partners Program (SFIP) as a member. The idea is to create a solution for verifying IDs and preventing identity fraud that meets all the regulatory requirements. Spring Labs recently named a number of FinTechs as members of the program, including SoFi, OnDeck Capital, Avant, GreenSky, Funding Circle, BlueVine, Fundation, Upgrade, Fundbox and Better Mortgage.

According to a report in CoinDesk, citing Spring Labs, the blockchain FinTech said that GM is also looking at buying a stake in the company. A GM Financial spokesperson declined to comment on the report.

“We are actively exploring the development of auto finance and GM-specific use cases, in addition to the identity verification products being developed,” said Spring Labs Co-founder and CEO Adam Jiwan, according to the report. The executive noted that the network Spring Labs is developing will be in private beta with its partners in the third quarter of this year, and is slated to go live in the early part of 2020.