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Many businesses underestimate — or simply do not realize — how much money leaks every day due to the lack of biometric protection. From e-commerce and banking to car-sharing and online education, any digital service encounters situations where a user is not who they claim to be. And where there is anonymity, there is fraud. As long as these schemes remain possible, a company stays vulnerable to a wide range of fraudulent scenarios. Let’s explore how exactly these losses occur and how to prevent them.

1. Onboarding Fraud: When a Fraudster Pretends to Be a Legitimate User

Onboarding is the most vulnerable stage for fraud. If the system does not verify the user’s face — or does it poorly — it essentially has no idea who is registering. This leads to common risks:

What Happens Without Biometrics

Fraudsters use generated documents, Photoshop, or stolen scans. Without comparing a face to a document, the system accepts someone else’s or completely fake data. As a result, attackers can perform any actions under another person’s identity or under a fabricated one, creating accounts for resale or using them in fraudulent schemes.

Financial Losses

• Chargeback losses — “It wasn’t me who paid / I didn’t receive the item / I was scammed — give me my money back.”
• Legal risks caused by incorrect KYC.
• Reputational damage from appearing in fraud reports.
• Additional costs for manual application reviews.

How Biometrics Solves This

• Real-time selfie verification matched with ID photos eliminates registrations using stolen or generated documents.
• Liveness detection prevents the use of fakes, deepfakes, masks, or photos.

2. Multi-Accounting

If one user can create 5–50 accounts, the product’s economics collapses. This is a critical issue for marketplaces, delivery services, ticketing, car-sharing, gaming, fintech services, and SaaS subscriptions. Any market with promotions, welcome bonuses, or cashback will inevitably attract users who create 20 accounts and redeem the bonus 20 times.

How Multi-Accounting Works

• A single user creates multiple accounts.
• Receives repeated bonuses, discounts, referral rewards.
• Uses them for free purchases or cash withdrawal.

One person may end up creating dozens of accounts to exploit promo codes, trial periods, bypass blocks or limits, or buy 5+ tickets for resale.

Without Biometrics, a User Can:

• Use unlimited emails and phone numbers.
• Use VPN.
• Spoof IP addresses.
• Generate hundreds of “new devices.”

But they cannot spoof a face — making biometrics the most reliable deduplication method:

• Links an account to one real individual.
• Blocks repeated registrations.
• Reduces workload on anti-fraud teams.

3. Account Sharing

One person purchases access — ten people use it

To cut costs, users share subscriptions or resell them on various platforms

This is especially critical for:

• online education,
• subscription services,
• trading apps,
• corporate systems.

Financial Losses

• Revenue drop due to bypassing subscription models.
• Data leaks.
• Decreased control and security.

How Biometrics Solves This

• Verifies the legitimate account owner when logging in from a new device.
• Prevents transferring accounts to third parties.
• Adds an extra layer of protection for personal data and funds.

4. How Biometrics Solves the Problem

The Only Way to Guarantee User Uniqueness

Unlike phone numbers, emails, IP addresses, or devices, a face cannot be quickly replicated in hundreds of copies

Strong Protection Against Spoofing

Modern liveness checks detect:

• photos of screens or printed images,
• masks,
• deepfake videos,
• another person’s face.

Cost Reduction for KYC and Security

Automation replaces manual checks and reduces application processing costs.

Clean and Accurate User Base Growth

Biometrics filters out “junk” profiles, improving analytics, targeting, and conversion.

No Biometrics Means Direct and Hidden Losses

Without biometrics, a company loses money in four areas:

• Onboarding fraud — letting scammers through.
• Multi-accounting — abuse of bonuses and discounts.
• Unreliable data — flawed analytics and forecasts.
• Costs of manual checks and security operations.

Implementing biometrics reduces onboarding fraud by up to 90% and minimizes multi-account losses to almost zero.