A consumer applies for an auto loan on Sunday afternoon. Your lending team won’t review the application until Monday, and with legacy video-only verification, that means scheduling a video call during business hours, adding days to the approval process.

What if, instead, your loan officer could send a secure verification link via text on Monday morning, and the consumer could complete verification immediately on their phone, whether they’re at work, at home, or on their lunch break? No scheduling, no video call coordination, no branch visit required.

That gap between consumer expectations and your institution’s verification capabilities is one of the biggest hidden sources of lost accounts for modern Community Financial Institutions (CFIs). A rigid, video-only verification system doesn’t just frustrate consumers; it creates revenue leakage at the exact moment you’re trying to build new relationships.

It’s time to rethink how identity verification works.

That’s where Eltropy Identity Verification (IDV) comes in.

The Hidden Cost of Video-Only Verification

Credit unions and community banks have made significant investments in video banking and remote verification over the past few years. But here’s what many operations leaders are discovering: video-only verification creates as many problems as it solves.

• Scheduling friction: Consumers must coordinate calendars with your staff, creating abandonment at the worst possible moment: onboarding.
• Channel dependency: What happens when a consumer texts your institution about opening an account? With video-only verification, your agent must tell them to schedule a video call during business hours, adding coordination friction and delays to a process that should be instant.
• Limited fraud detection: Visual inspection of an ID during a video call misses sophisticated fake documents, tampering, and spoofing attempts that AI-powered technology catches instantly.
• Mobile experience gap: Video verification wasn’t designed for how consumers actually bank today; on smartphones, across multiple channels, on their schedule.
• Geographic limitations: International consumers with non-US IDs face rejection or manual workarounds that slow everything down.

The operational costs compound when you factor in staff time for scheduling, callback loops when consumers miss appointments, and fraud losses from attacks that visual inspection alone can’t detect.

Perhaps most critically, video-only verification disconnects your competitive advantage (accessible, consumer-first service) from your verification requirements. You’re forcing consumers to work around your limitations instead of meeting them where they are.

What Makes Channel-Agnostic Verification Different

Eltropy Identity Verification is a modern, cloud-native identity verification solution built from the ground up for CFIs. It replaces video-only limitations with a flexible, intelligent approach that works across text, chat, voice, and video, meeting members on their terms while delivering stronger fraud protection than legacy solutions.

Here’s how it works:

A consumer contacts your institution through any channel they prefer. When they need identity verification (account opening, loan application, wire transfer, account changes), your agent initiates verification directly within the conversation.

• For Text and Voice: The agent sends a secure verification link via text message. The consumer clicks it, completes verification on their mobile device, and the agent receives instant results – all while staying on the call or continuing the text conversation.
• For Chat and Video: No link needed. A real-time verification request appears directly within the chat interface or video calling screen. Consumers complete verification in-app without leaving the conversation.

Total time: under three minutes from request to verified identity.

Four-Layer Security That Actually Works

Unlike video-only solutions that rely on visual inspection alone, Eltropy IDV combines four verification layers:

• Text Verification: Validates phone ownership with a one-time passcode, confirming the consumer controls the number they’re providing. Can be enabled or disabled based on your institution’s risk requirements.

• Document Verification: AI-powered scanning validates government-issued IDs (Driver’s License, Passport, ID Card, Residency Permit, Visa) from 200+ countries. The system detects fake documents, tampering, and expiration issues and validates that the extracted data matches what the consumer entered.

• Selfie Check (Liveness Detection): Biometric verification ensures the person presenting the ID is actually present, not a photo, mask, screen, or deepfake. The live selfie must match the photo on the government ID. During live video calls, this step may be configured differently since visual verification occurs in real-time.

• Risk Assessment: Comprehensive fraud detection cross-references member data against databases to flag deceased individuals, invalid addresses, mismatched PII, synthetic identities, and other fraud indicators. Powered by Plaid’s industry-leading technology, the same fraud detection infrastructure is used by major fintech companies.

This layered approach means fraudsters can’t exploit a single weak point. Even if they have a real ID stolen from a deceased individual, they’ll fail the selfie check. Even if they pass the selfie check with a sophisticated deepfake, they’ll get flagged by risk assessment.

Real-world impact: APL Federal Credit Union stopped an $80,000 fraudulent wire transfer within 24 hours of implementation when the fraudster refused identity verification via video channel. 

What This Means for Your Institution

For New Accounts & Membership Teams: Turn Applications Into Funded Accounts Same-Day

Picture this: A prospective consumer receives a secure verification link via text from your new accounts team. They’re ready to complete verification and fund their account. But your verification process requires scheduling a video call during business hours; coordinating calendars, waiting for availability, trying again if they miss the appointment. What happens? They abandon the application and try the financial institution down the street where verification takes three minutes.

Channel-agnostic verification eliminates this friction point. Your team sends a secure verification link via text (or initiates verification directly within chat/video conversations), and the consumer completes verification in under three minutes on their mobile device, whenever it’s convenient for them. No scheduling, no callbacks, no lost applications. With support for IDs from 200+ countries, you can onboard international consumers confidently while maintaining complete CIP/KYC compliance. Digital applications that used to take days now convert to funded accounts the same day.

For Lending & Loan Officers: Accelerate Loan Origination Without Sacrificing Security

In lending, speed matters. The difference between closing a loan and losing it to a competitor often comes down to how quickly you can move from application to approval. When a consumer texts about a personal loan or applies for an auto loan on Saturday afternoon, they’re ready to move forward immediately. If your verification process requires scheduling a video call during business hours, that enthusiasm cools, and they may secure financing elsewhere by Monday.

Channel-agnostic verification changes this dynamic entirely. Your loan officers verify borrowers instantly during the application process, regardless of channel or time of day. Verification becomes part of the natural conversation flow rather than a separate coordination step. You can verify co-signers and co-borrowers remotely with the same four-layer security, dramatically reducing time-to-funding and closing more loans before competitors respond.

For Member Services & Contact Centers: Verify During Any Interaction

Your contact center handles identity-sensitive requests every day: wire transfers, account changes, dispute resolutions, password resets, and more. Traditional video-only approaches force agents to transfer members to specialists or tell them to call back during specific hours. The consumer gets frustrated, you lose time to coordination overhead, and sometimes requests never get completed.

Channel-agnostic verification eliminates these handoffs entirely. Any agent can initiate verification directly within the conversation they’re already having, whether via text, chat, voice, or video. This capability proved its value for APL Federal Credit Union when an agent initiated identity verification for a wire transfer request. The fraudster, who had been confident enough to request $80,000, immediately disconnected when asked to verify. The transaction was blocked within 24 hours of implementation, demonstrating how seamless security prevents fraud before funds move.

For Compliance & Risk Teams: Four-Layer Security That Meets Regulatory Requirements

Video-only verification relies on visual inspection alone, but fraud has become significantly more sophisticated. Fake IDs that look perfect to human eyes, deepfake video technology, stolen identities from deceased individuals, these attacks are designed specifically to defeat visual inspection.

Channel-agnostic verification combines four independent layers: Text verification validates phone ownership, AI-powered document scanning detects tampering and validates authenticity, biometric liveness detection ensures the person matches the ID photo, and risk assessment flags deceased individuals, synthetic identities, and fraud patterns. Fraudsters must defeat all four layers simultaneously; they can’t exploit a single weak point. Every verification creates complete audit trails with watermarked images and detailed results that meet CIP/KYC requirements. 

For Operations Leaders: Reduce Costs While Improving Security

Operations leaders face competing pressures: reduce costs, improve efficiency, strengthen security, and enhance consumer experience. Traditional video verification creates scheduling overhead, administrative burden from coordination and no-shows, and fraud remediation costs when sophisticated attacks make it through visual inspection.

Channel-agnostic verification eliminates scheduling coordination entirely. Consumers verify on demand, agents process requests as they arrive, and multi-layer security stops fraud before it reaches your core system. If you’re already running unified communications, identity verification becomes an additional capability within that platform with no new systems for IT to support or separate vendor relationships to manage. The system scales efficiently without proportional staffing increases, handling volume spikes through automated fraud detection and mobile-first workflows. Institutions currently running Eltropy Identity Verification report faster processing, reduced exception queues, significant fraud prevention, and consistent 99-100% success rates.

The Competitive Reality

Let’s address the fundamental question: Is channel-agnostic identity verification optional?

The answer increasingly is no, but not because every CFI needs identical capabilities. It’s because consumer expectations have permanently shifted, and institutions that can’t meet basic digital convenience requirements will lose relationships to competitors who can.

Consider what’s happening in the market:

• Consumers aren’t comparing you to other community financial institutions anymore. They’re comparing you to the mobile-first experiences at Chase, the instant verification at fintech apps, and the 24/7 availability of digital-native banks. And increasingly, they’re making switching decisions based on everyday convenience rather than relationship history.
• Fraud is getting more sophisticated. Deepfakes, synthetic identities, and document forgery technology have evolved beyond what visual inspection can detect. Your fraud prevention needs AI-powered capabilities to keep pace.
• Regulatory expectations are rising. Examiners increasingly expect documented, consistent verification processes with complete audit trails. Not ad hoc video calls with minimal documentation.
• Digital transformation has reached critical mass. The institutions that figured out channel-agnostic verification two years ago are now processing hundreds of verifications monthly with 99-100% success rates. The ones still debating it are losing accounts to competitors who’ve already made the transition.

The choice isn’t whether to modernize identity verification. It’s whether you’ll modernize in a way that reinforces your competitive advantage or undermines it.

Channel-agnostic verification lets you compete on digital convenience while differentiating on security and service. It gives you the operational efficiency of automation with the fraud protection of multi-layer verification. And it delivers these outcomes without the technology complexity or member friction that makes video-only implementations so limiting.

For COOs, it’s a fraud prevention and efficiency play. For CIOs, it’s a technology consolidation move. For risk officers, it’s a security upgrade. For member experience leaders, it’s a competitive differentiation opportunity.

For CFI leadership teams, it’s increasingly the answer to a strategic question: How do we deliver the convenience members expect while maintaining the security and compliance that defines responsible banking?

The institutions figuring this out now are building sustainable competitive advantages. The ones still debating it are losing members to competitors who’ve already made the transition.

Ready to See How It Works?

If you’re an existing Eltropy customer, reach out to your Customer Success Manager to schedule a personalized demo of Eltropy Identity Verification for your institution. They can walk you through the agent experience, consumer journey, and operational dashboard tailored to your specific use cases.

Not yet an Eltropy customer? Contact our team to learn how the Unified Conversations Platform (with native Identity Verification capabilities) can transform your consumer onboarding experience while strengthening fraud prevention and operational efficiency.

At Eltropy, we believe meeting consumers where they are – across any channel, on their terms – is the key to competitive differentiation in modern community banking. Eltropy Identity Verification brings that vision to life.

Let’s build your future-proof identity verification strategy, together.