In September 2026, VIDA attended FEKDI x IFSE 2026 in Jakarta. For those following the development of Indonesia’s fintech and digital economy in recent years, the forum has become an important platform to assess the progress of the digital ecosystem and discuss the challenges ahead.
This year, one challenge is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: advances in deepfake technology are making identity fraud easier to carry out. Meanwhile, are financial institutions’ security systems keeping pace with these threats?
More economic activities are moving to digital channels. From opening bank accounts and applying for loans to signing contracts, these activities can now be completed on a mobile phone without face-to-face interactions. While this convenience creates opportunities for the industry, it also presents a new challenge: how can institutions ensure that the people accessing their services are truly authorized to do so?
VIDA Founder and Group CEO Niki Luhur emphasized that the main issue facing payment systems and financial institutions is not the transactions themselves, but how to ensure that those transactions are carried out by legitimate parties.
“The problem with payment systems has always been about verifying the identity of the parties involved in a transaction,” Niki stressed.
For years, financial institutions have relied on identity verification methods such as checking identity documents, including national ID cards, and matching faces.
These methods have become an important part of digital processes, but they were not designed to address every type of attack emerging today.
AI is now changing how fraudsters operate. Creating convincing fake identities no longer requires advanced technical skills. Photos can be manipulated, one person’s face can be superimposed onto another person’s video, and fake content can even be injected directly into the verification process.
As a result, confirming that a document and face appear valid may not be enough to establish that the identity is actually being used by its rightful owner. If a system cannot distinguish genuine users from digital manipulation, it leaves an opening for fraud.
For VIDA, this shift highlights the need to build security beyond an initial identity check. Institutions must also consider how verification takes place, the devices being used, and the security of transactions after an identity has been verified.
How Deepfakes Are Used in Different Types of Fraud
In the financial industry, deepfake threats extend beyond realistic-looking fake videos. Fraudsters can use various interactive deepfake techniques to manipulate identities or deceive verification systems. These include:
- Synthetic video, in which AI is used to generate or manipulate video content to make it appear that someone is performing a particular action.
- Face swap, a technique that replaces one person’s face with another person’s face in a photo or video.
- Video replay, which involves reusing existing facial recordings or verification videos in an attempt to bypass security checks.
- Injection attack, which involves inserting manipulated images, videos, or other content directly into a camera data stream instead of capturing a live interaction through the device’s camera.
These techniques work in different ways. Therefore, a single verification method may not be able to detect every type of attack.
The more important issue, then, is not simply how easily deepfake content can be created. The real challenge is that identity verification alone is no longer enough to determine whether a transaction is being carried out by a legitimate user or involves the use of deepfake technology.
In the Age of Deepfakes, It Is Time to Rethink Verification
The industry needs to rethink its approach to security. Verification should not be treated as a one-time check at the beginning of a process. Instead, it needs to be reinforced with multiple layers of security to ensure that transactions are carried out by legitimate users.
Someone may successfully pass facial verification. However, that check does not necessarily answer several important questions:
- Is the device being used secure, or has it been compromised?
- Is the submitted identity document genuine and unaltered?
- Can the digital connection or session be trusted?
- Was the transaction genuinely authorized by the person concerned?
For customers, these additional security measures should not make the process more complicated. They should still be able to open bank accounts, apply for loans, or sign documents as usual. The difference is that, behind the scenes, institutions conduct checks at every stage. If suspicious activity is detected, the process can be reviewed further before it leads to financial losses.
The goal is not to add more steps for customers, but to ensure that security does not depend on a single verification check. Each check serves a different purpose, and together, they provide more comprehensive protection.
This need is becoming increasingly pressing as more services move online, from finance and healthcare to education and public services. All these sectors need to ensure that the people accessing their services are authorized to do so.
That is why talent development, regulatory clarity, and collaboration between the government, regulators, and industry are essential to the digital transformation agenda. Innovation can only grow sustainably when trust and security are built in from the start.
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