Trulioo: Offering Free ID Verification Services To Help SMBs Navigate The COVID Crisis

As retailers faced a spike in digital fraud with the onset of the pandemic, Trulioo recognized the challenges that small businesses were facing and took action by offering free access to its identity network. “This helped them to mitigate their risk, build trust with their customers and, ultimately, to protect and grow their revenues in the most testing circumstances imaginable,” says COO Zac Cohen.

The following is an excerpt from What Did You Change?, contributed by Zac Cohen, chief operating officer of Trulioo.

The COVID-19 pandemic has tested the resolve and financial stability of small businesses like nothing before. Across all sectors, small businesses have had to adapt almost overnight to severe restrictions on movement and commerce that have in many cases threatened their very survival.

With the sudden shift to a digital-only economy in March, most small businesses had to create digital platforms to serve their customers — and had to ensure that these digital services were able to cope with huge fluctuations in demand in a highly volatile marketplace. These digital transformation projects, which usually take months or years, had to be designed and rolled out in a matter of days and weeks. And, of course, this meant that many SMBs simply didn’t have the usual amount of time and resources to focus on fraud prevention.

This brought additional risk, with criminals targeting these businesses that potentially would not have the same level of online security in place as larger organizations. Fraudsters were also acutely aware that many consumers, particularly the most vulnerable groups in society, were using digital services for the first time as a result of the pandemic. Once again, they were an obvious target for fraud and identity theft.

A TransUnion survey conducted in the early weeks of the pandemic found that 22 percent of retailers had been the target of digital fraud related to COVID-19, even at that stage.

We recognized these huge challenges that small businesses were facing and immediately knew that we wanted to do whatever we could to help them through this period. The vast majority of small businesses simply don’t have the systems or financial reserves to respond to such immense disruption — and yet they play a vital part in our economy, employing millions of workers and driving economic growth and prosperity.

We decided to do what we do best: offer our identity verification solutions. But in this case, we did it for free to help businesses protect against bad actors while ensuring safety and trust online. Small businesses can now get 100 free identity verification transactions with Trulioo every single month.

As these companies looked to ramp up their digital capabilities to serve their customers, we stood by them, providing free access to our identity network, the world’s largest marketplace of trusted independent data sources. This helped them to mitigate their risk, build trust with their customers and, ultimately, to protect and grow their revenues in the most testing circumstances imaginable.