New Year Business Guide - brought to you by APL Media • Wednesday 14 January 2026 T e AI identity war


In the battle to establish trust — whether you’re verifying an individual or a business — the front line is no longer human


Algorithms now race against algorithms, working at machine speed to determine who or what gets access to your platform. Identity attacks have escalated


sharply. Identity fraud now accounts for 59% of all cases reported to the UK National Fraud Database, and generative AI is driving the surge. Criminals can create synthetic IDs, forge documents and fake corporate credentials in a matter of seconds.


For businesses making KYC


(know your customer) checks, this means individuals can be impersonated using deepfakes and highly realistic fake documents. Businesses running KYB (know your business) checks need to be aware of criminals spinning up shell companies, spoofi ng benefi cial owners and fabricating onboarding records faster than traditional checks can respond. Now, with the new Companies


House identity verifi cation requirements for directors, PSCs and all those fi ling information, businesses must go beyond


simply checking whether a document looks legitimate. They must confi rm the real existence of both the person and the business behind them. Legacy approaches simply can’t meet this standard anymore. Criminals now use AI to probe


weaknesses in verifi cation systems. And as these tools become cheaper and easier to access, attack frequency and sophistication across KYC and KYB will only increase. At its current trajectory, deepfake fraud will reportedly1


hit $40bn


(£30bn) by 2027 — the same amount OpenAI raised in 2025.


COLUM LYONS, CEO ID-PAL ROBERT O’FARRELL, CTO ID-PAL


Businesses running KYB (know your business) checks need to be aware of criminals spinning up shell companies, spoofi ng benefi cial owners and fabricating onboarding records faster than traditional checks can respond


Coming to the defence, AI is


powering the next evolution of trust. ID-Pal’s AI-driven verifi cation


platform delivers advanced fraud detection for both individuals and businesses. By scanning personal documents, analysing facial signals, validating corporate information and verifying in real time, a multi-layered AI approach exposes machine fi ngerprints long before a fraudster enters your onboarding fl ow. While fraudsters may attempt


to bypass standard checks using AI-generated IDs, AI-powered verifi cation engines like ID-Pal detect the inconsistencies that expose deepfakes instantly. Today, low-cost tools can generate


unlimited synthetic identities, fake documents and fabricated business paperwork. The only eff ective defence is a hybrid AI strategy that establishes a verifi able chain of trust from the moment data is captured to the fi nal onboarding decision.


ACROSS KYC AND KYB, ONE TRUTH STANDS OUT Trust is now a technology challenge, and staying ahead means evolving faster than the threats that undermine that trust.


1. HTTPS://WWW.DELOITTE.COM/US/EN/INSIGHTS/INDUSTRY/FINANCIAL-SERVICES/DEEPFAKE-BANKING-FRAUD-RISK-ON-THE-RISE.HTML


At its current trajectory, deepfake fraud will reportedly hit $40bn (£30bn) by 2027 — the same amount OpenAI raised in 2025. Coming to the defence, AI is powering the next evolution of trust


Learn more


ID-Pal — a solution that blends 100% AI-powered identity verifi cation technology with robust compliance and zero access to data.


To fi nd out more, visit: id-pal.com/demo-request/


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