ID verification integration can stop fake employees, customers and bots: Persona

Fake job seekers have been flooding companies, relying on AI technology such as deepfakes to fool hiring managers and apply for remote jobs. This has created new opportunities for identity verification companies such as Persona.

The U.S. firm has announced it will be joining hands with background screening platform Yardstik to create an integrated product that can help organizations verify workers. The solution will integrate Persona’s identity verification with screening products such as criminal and MVR Driving Records checks, drug screening and more, the two firms said in a release.

“Organizations are caught in an impossible bind – they need to move fast to secure the best talent while ensuring they’re not onboarding bad actors,” says Persona CEO and co-founder Rick Song.

The company’s collaboration with Yardstik will eliminate that trade-off, allowing platforms to verify identity and assess risk simultaneously, he adds.

Persona has been working with gig working platforms such as TaskRabbit, GetYourGuide, Fiverr and Lyft. Yardstick’s products, on the other hand, have already been incorporated by companies such as Skipcart, Workwhile, Bacon and Bellhop.

Protecting from bots and fake consumers

Persona has deeper ambitions when it comes to preventing fraudsters from passing off as potential employees or posing as consumers.

Fraudsters relying on fake identities and bots are also becoming a threat to security-critical operations like commerce, banking and payments. The digital verification firm aspires to be the identity layer that companies can use to offload that risk.

“The reality today is that without asking the user to do something more, there is no way to distinguish between a bot and a legitimate user,” Song said during an interview with trade publication Pymnts last week.

However, no consumer wants to perform biometric scans or show a government ID just to read an article, he adds. The goal, then, is to make identity verification seamless.

When it comes to consumers in publishing, human users could be identified anonymously, allowing advertisers to serve relevant content without violating privacy or wasting impressions on bots.

To achieve seamlessness, a three-layer architecture is needed – verification, data management and orchestration. Persona can conduct verification through government IDs, biometric scans and digital credentials such as mobile driver’s licenses (MDLs), CPASS or European Union digital wallets. The orchestration part, on the other hand, allows the company to aggregate and integrate disparate identity signals into a single, usable framework and manage personal data, according to Song.

The CEO compared digital IDs to credit card numbers: Consumers have learned to be comfortable with sharing credit card numbers as a proxy for bank accounts.

“We’re looking for a digital ID that acts as a proxy – something that, if it gets hijacked, can be reissued,” says Song

Global fragmentation of digital IDs

The world will likely see a wave of data protectionism and digital ID fragmentation, as governments build separate digital ID schemes and advocate for storing data locally, according to Song.

Currently, however, there is no global standard for how to create or use digital IDs, while different standards exist even within single countries, Persona explains in a recent blog post. The writing delves into the different approaches that major countries are taking when it comes to electronic IDs and digital IDs.

The U.S. established federal ID standards with the Real ID Act of 2005, but states manage their own digital ID programs without nationwide eID requirements.

The EU passed the eIDAS in May 2024 and is working on the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet, while India’s Aadhaar system covers over 99 percent of adults through biometric identification. Japan launched My Number Cards in 2016, featuring NFC chips and smartphone integration.

Brazil has pursued digital identity since the early 2000s, incorporating biometrics, QR codes, and blockchain technology. The country was one of the first to introduce facial recognition verification against national databases and established federal oversight for its biometric ID system in early 2025.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital ID  |  fraud prevention  |  identity verification  |  Persona  |  Yardstik