Anti-Money Laundering

Money laundering is an illegal activity carried out by criminals who want to make large amounts of ill-gotten money appear to have come from a legitimate source. The ‘dirty’ money from the criminal activity is directed through personal or business bank accounts or other channels to ‘launder’ it and make it look clean.

Money laundering is often mistakenly seen as a victimless crime but in reality, it is often used to fund terrorism and other activity that affects global security and stability. 

Anti-Money Laundering, or AML, is the attempt to identify and prevent this activity using laws, policies, and other means. 

For example, the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Directives set out detailed steps for banks and other organizations to follow to identify and prevent money laundering. These steps include Know Your Customer, or KYC, activity that verifies a customer’s identity at enrollment and then monitors ongoing financial activity to report suspicious behavior. 

Biometric face verification can be used by regulated organizations during online customer enrollment to verify user identity and help ensure compliance with KYC and other AML regulations. 

Face biometric verification enables the ID in a government-issued document to be matched with a scan of a physical face, while also detecting the liveness of that face. iProov also goes a step further and assures that the interaction is happening in real-time. This prevents synthetic identity fraud and new account fraud, both of which can be used to set up an account that is then used during money laundering. 

Face biometric authentication can also be used when an existing customer logs into their account, preventing criminals from taking over a legitimate person’s account and using it for money-laundering purposes.

Learn More About Anti-Money Laundering

Article: How Does Biometric Face Verification Help Protect Banks Against Money Laundering?

Article: What Is KYC and Why Is It Important? How Is It Part of AML?