Identity theft and fraud!  Ugh!  More and more of us are having our identities stolen.  ID fraud is at an all time high, especially as the pandemic has provided more “free time” for thieves to do their thing.  According to the credit agency, Transunion, “10% of US adults report being a victim of identity theft since the onset of the pandemic” and “83% of Americans are concerned about their identity being stolen.”  Not surprisingly, this has spilled into the business world, as retail and hospitality businesses are also seeing an increase in fraudulent activity as a percentage of transactions.

While many companies have invested in anti-fraud technologies “from digital to digital”, most of them have just forgotten the “paper to digital” process.  So, even if most ID documents are submitted online these days, those submitted physically are potentially a source of higher fraud rate (as a percentage) if not accurately verified. 

For example, manual ID verification is a recurrent task for retail staff: when validating the IDs of customers making in-store pickups or paying by credit card/check, when issuing refunds, on-boarding to rewards/loyalty programs, etc.  Spotting fraud isn’t easy.  According to IDology (2019), 58% of retail businesses experienced an increase in ID fraud.  For less-trained individuals like cashiers, the failure rate is as high as 50%.

Xerox has a solution to help!  In 2020, we launched the Xerox ID Checker App available for download and install from the Xerox App Gallery.  The Xerox® ID Checker App enables walk-up users of Xerox® AltaLink and VersaLink multifunction devices to easily scan official IDs and have them checked for authenticity.

The app supports the crucial ID verification process when starting from a paper document in non-regulated environments (Retail, Hospitality, Tourism), and at a competitive price point. Meanwhile, you won’t see this available from any of our competitors.

So, what exactly does this app do?  The Xerox® ID Checker App allows the user to scan typical ID documents (drivers’ licenses, passports, country IDs) that include Machine Readable Zones (MRZ) (those odd characters at the bottom) and get instant verification reports right on the device and/or sent by email.  The app also supports an option to export the extracted data (in XML or JSON format) for external use to facilitate customer-specific on-boarding processes.  In fact, this capability offers a Xerox channel partner the ability to provide professional services that might be needed to integrate the app into their workflows.

The steps are simple.  After selecting the country of origin for the document and the specific document from drop-down lists, simply place the document down on the platen and hit “Scan”.  A preview pops up to confirm the quality of the scan, or to rescan, if necessary.

Currently, the app supports the following languages in the User Interface:  English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, and Turkish.

However, the list of supported countries and associated IDs is constantly evolving.  Today, we support:  France, Belgium, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, United Kingdom, Romania, Norway, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Finland, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina, Netherlands, United States, and Russia.  But, as this list is evergreen, the most up-to-date list can be found here.

Have other countries you’d like us to look at supporting?  Have other questions?   Please let me know!