Face Authenticate

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This is an introductory guide and overview for the Face Authenticate product. For a technical overview and integration guidance for Face Authenticate, you may wish to read our quick start guide.

Face Authenticate is available via the following Onfido SDKs:

You'll find API documentation separately.

Introduction

Face Authenticate allows users, who have been verified and explicitly trusted, to continually re-verify their identity. It is a fully automated, real time comparison between an end user’s current and previous facial biometrics.

Users' facial biometrics are collected via a face scan completed on the Onfido SDKs, which is then used to create a 3D facemap of the applicant using patented technology. The 3D facemap is compared with previously recorded facial biometrics each time an authentication attempt is made by the user to confirm their identity. Face Authentication verifies both if the facial biometrics match, and if it’s a real person.

Note: Applicants are not required to complete identity verification checks with Onfido to use Face Authentication, but it is recommended to verify an end user’s identity before using authentication.

Use cases

There are a number of use cases, including:

account recovery
approving high risk transactions
enabling access to services (e.g. car rental)

Trusted faces

Each applicant you run Face Authenticate against must have a trusted image selected and set via Trusted faces. This image acts as the reference for an applicant's identity in the initial authentication attempt.

You can assign an image submitted by an applicant during a Document report, a Facial Similarity report or any image of the applicant that you trust.

Note: Onfido will not check the validity of images submitted via Trusted Faces, so you should only use images that you trust.

Result logic

An Authentication attempt can either succeed or fail.

The result is indicated in the success or verified parameter which is returned as true for success or false for failure.

Authentication is only successful if both:

The applicant’s 3D facemap matches the applicant’s 2D trusted face image (1st authentication attempt) OR the applicant’s 3D facemap matches the previous attempt’s 3D facemap (subsequent authentication attempts)

AND

The applicant passes a liveness test when completing the face scan

Note: If an applicant’s initial authentication attempt is unsuccessful, they will not be able to use face authentication to re-verify their identity.