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Comment by orf | Hacker News Reader

FYI it turns out that humans are pretty bad at comparing faces to ID documents. Like, really quite bad.

Automated methods, like the ones Revolut use, are significantly more effective at KYC than a Jane Doe working a 9-5 at a bank. In no way is it “tip-toeing around KYC”, and while really unfortunate leaking a selfie is pretty low down on the list of “bad stuff a bank could leak”.

The implication that the solution to this is to somehow convince your direct competitors to do inferior in-person KYC for you is the most ridiculous thing.

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>The implication that the solution to this is to somehow convince your direct competitors to do inferior in-person KYC for you is the most ridiculous thing.

People work with their competitors all the time (see Netfix vs Amazon). Whats ridiculuous is the claim that a scammer would prefer to show up physically at a bank and risk being exposed instead of operating remotely.

>leaking a selfie is pretty low down on the list of “bad stuff a bank could leak”.

don't some of them require a selfie while holding legible official documentation?

No, it’s most certainly patently ridiculous.

> Whats ridiculuous is the claim that a scammer would prefer to show up physically at a bank and risk being exposed instead of operating remotely.

Of course they wouldn’t prefer to show physically. What does that mean though? Are you saying no scammers showed up physically to banks, therefore banking fraud rates are less? Do you have a source for that?

> don't some of them require a selfie while holding legible official documentation?

You can of course do KYC as stupidly as you like (zoom calls anyone?) - Revolut (and their providers) obviously separate document presentation from the liveness check (and fyi this is a short video, not a selfie. The selfie they are talking about is just a capture from the video)

>No, it’s most certainly patently ridiculous

Is your argument supposed to be more convincing because you added the word "patently"?

>What does that mean though?

It means that when you find a way to bypass purely online identity verification checks executing fraud at scale is easier than the physical alternative. As you would say, this is patently obvious.

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