Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
24/06/2026 8:42 pm
TL;DR: Digital trust for payments is shifting toward unified identity proofing and passwordless authentication as fraud, account takeover, synthetic identity abuse, and deepfake-enabled scams rise, according to 1Kosmos. The security boundary is moving from transaction checks to identity assurance, where weak verification now creates measurable business risk.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by 1Kosmos: PayTech Awards USA recognition for digital trust in payments
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should organisations design identity proofing for payment accounts?
A: Organisations should treat identity proofing as an enrolment control, not a login feature.
Q: Why do passwordless controls matter in financial services?
A: Passwordless controls matter because they reduce reliance on secrets that are commonly stolen, reused, or phished.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about deepfake fraud?
A: Security teams often focus on whether a deepfake looks convincing instead of asking whether the whole trust chain can survive manipulation.
Practitioner guidance
- Map trust decisions to lifecycle stages Identify where your payment journey establishes identity trust, then separate enrollment assurance, step-up authentication, and transaction authorisation into distinct checkpoints.
- Adopt phishing-resistant authenticators for high-risk actions Use passwordless methods that resist credential replay for account changes, payout updates, and privileged customer support actions.
- Strengthen exception handling for fraud review Require additional corroboration when review workflows rely on images, receipts, or other user-supplied evidence.
What's in the full analysis
1Kosmos' full post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The award category context and how the nomination was positioned for payment and financial services buyers.
- The vendor's explanation of unifying identity proofing with passwordless authentication across trust workflows.
- The additional recognition points from FedRAMP High, Gartner Critical Capabilities, KuppingerCole, and Gartner Hype Cycle mentions.
- The source article's own framing of market direction in payments security.
Identity proofing and passwordless auth in payments: what changes now?
Explore further
25/06/2026 5:27 am
Digital trust in payments is now an identity governance problem, not just a fraud problem. When payment ecosystems speed up, the control point moves upstream to proofing and authentication. That means IAM teams, fraud teams, and security architects can no longer manage trust in separate silos. The practitioner conclusion is that identity assurance must be governed as a shared control plane across customer, workforce, and transaction flows.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 80% of identity breaches involved compromised non-human identities such as service accounts and API keys, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which means many identity programmes still cannot see the full blast radius of machine access.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How can IAM and fraud teams work from the same trust model?
A: IAM and fraud teams should share identity evidence, lifecycle state, and risk signals so they evaluate the same subject with the same thresholds. That reduces gaps between enrolment, authentication, and transaction review. A shared model is strongest when it shows where trust was established, where it was strengthened, and where exceptions were allowed.
👉 Read our full editorial: Digital trust for payments now hinges on identity proofing and auth
