Why video calls are no longer proof of identity in high-risk payments

Video used to be the easy part of remote trust: you got on a call, saw a face, heard a voice, and moved on. That assumption is now a liability. Identomat says generative AI and deepfakes have made screen-based identity checks too easy to fake, which matters directly for PSPs, banks, and high-risk operators handling urgent transfers, director approvals, and onboarding decisions.

1. In early 2024, an employee at a multinational firm in Hong Kong joined what looked like a confidential video conference with the company’s UK-based chief financial officer and several finance colleagues. According to Hong Kong police, none of the participants were real: the call was built with deepfake technology from public video and audio clips.
2. The employee authorised transfers of roughly HK$200m, about $25.5m, to five local bank accounts. The company was later named as engineering group Arup, which confirmed that fake voices and images had been used. For payments teams, that is the part that matters: the fraud did not depend on stolen credentials alone, but on a convincing live interaction.
3. The FBI has issued similar warnings about criminals using AI-generated video and audio to impersonate executives and other trusted individuals. Identomat’s position is blunt: video can still be part of verification, but it should never be the only proof of identity.
4. Automated KYC (know your customer) has already changed digital onboarding by letting customers submit documents, take selfies, and pass liveness checks without speaking to anyone. The problem shows up in the edge cases: inconsistent customer data, enhanced due diligence, unusually large transactions, account recovery from new devices, and internal requests such as an executive asking to move millions or change beneficiary details.
5. Identomat’s answer is Video KYC as a step-up layer for those moments. The workflow can include document verification, face matching, liveness detection, AML screening, consent confirmation, human review, and audit logs. The platform supports both one-to-one and multi-party sessions, with video as the communication layer and verification as the control layer.

In Identomat’s framing, the most sensitive use cases are not limited to onboarding. The company says the same approach can be used for KYB (know your business) checks on directors and beneficial owners, account recovery, lending, insurance claims, crypto platforms, government services, and even signing a high-value deal. For high-risk firms, the practical takeaway is simple: a live call may be useful, but it is no longer enough on its own to justify a transfer or close a file.