How Deepfake Fraud Sabotages Financial Inclusion

Your financial institution unknowingly opens an account for a fraudster using deepfake technology. This not only threatens your security but undermines the trust needed to onboard millions of unbanked individuals for successful financial inclusion.

Deepfake fraud is one of the biggest concerns in the financial sector today. Criminals use AI to create synthetic identities, tricking KYC processes and bypassing biometric verification. This fraud doesn’t just steal money, it steals trust that ruins progress made in digital finance.

The Growing Threat of Deepfake in Indonesia  

As Indonesia works to onboard the 66 million unbanked citizens, deepfake fraud has become an enemy of progress. According to a survey conducted by VIDA, 56% of financial businesses have already faced Synthetic Identity Fraud, while 67% have experienced Identity Impersonation Scams. These figures highlight a systemic issue that has already impacted over half of Indonesia’s financial institutions, making deepfake a pressing concern for businesses looking to expand their services to underserved populations.

Digital onboarding offers a huge opportunity to enhance financial inclusion, especially for those without a banking history or formal identification. However, the rise of deepfake technology threatens to undo these efforts. Fraudsters can now create hyper-realistic photos and videos to impersonate individuals, making the KYC process vulnerable to exploitation.

How Deepfake Undermines Trust and Inclusion  

For financial institutions expanding into unbanked markets, digital onboarding is crucial. But deepfake fraud is eroding the trust that these systems rely on. One major attack could result in massive financial losses and even worse—public skepticism about the security of digital financial services. 

This trust gap has far-reaching consequences. Consumers who might have embraced digital financial services are hesitant, choosing to stay in the informal economy. At the same time, businesses may hold back on expanding into new markets, fearing that deepfake fraud will compromise their KYC processes.

A Crisis of Trust

Consumers who witness deepfake fraud bypassing biometric verification worry about their own data security. As trust in digital services declines, so does the adoption of these services, directly hindering financial inclusion.

Businesses face more than just unauthorized transactions. The costs of recovery, audits, and rebuilding trust can be crippling. Deepfake fraud costs businesses hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per incident, and for smaller institutions, the financial blow can be devastating.

A single deepfake incident can damage a financial institution's reputation, resulting in lost customers and diminished partnerships. Rebuilding that trust takes time and significant resources, putting businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

As deepfake fraud becomes more widespread, public trust in financial technology as a whole erodes. Instead of embracing the convenience of digital onboarding, people may become skeptical, hesitant to engage with tech-based services. This makes it harder to bring the unbanked into the formal financial system.

How VIDA Protects Financial Inclusion from Deepfake Fraud  

VIDA understands the challenges posed by deepfake technology and offers cutting-edge solutions to protect your business as you expand into new markets. 

VIDA’s Liveness Detection technology differentiates between real individuals and synthetic identities, ensuring that only legitimate users can pass KYC systems.

VIDA’s AI-driven systems monitor for suspicious activity in real time, reducing fraud risk by 30%. These proactive defenses stop deepfake attacks before they can cause harm.

Combining biometric verification with additional layers of security, such as device authentication, VIDA makes sure that only verified users can access your services. This drastically reduces the risk of credential theft and deepfake manipulation.

Deepfake fraud is not just a technological problem it’s a threat to the future of financial inclusion. With VIDA, you’re not just defending your business from fraud, you’re safeguarding the future of digital finance and helping more people access the financial services they deserve.

Read more about AI-generated digital fraud: https://vida.id/wtf-whitepaper