Alice Biometrics is a spinoff of the Centro Tecnológico de Telecomunicaciones de Galicia (Gradiant), founded in Vigo in 2019 by Mikel Díaz de Otazu, Esteban Vázquez and Gradiant. The startup, which specialises in the field of cybersecurity and digital fraud, was created with the aim of commercialising a biometric identity verification solution that allows companies to carry out the new customer registration process 100% online and thus reduce fraud. To this end, it has also received support from the Ignicia programme of the Galician Innovation Agency, which has decisively boosted its technological maturation and subsequent market launch.

The company's technology integrates solutions for facial recognition in onboarding processes, life detection to prevent identity theft, automatic document reading and document security tools.

"Our mission is to create a safer digital world by protecting digital assets using the best anti-spoofing technology," explains Mike Díaz de Otazu, the company's CEO. In industry jargon, anti-spoofing refers to technology that helps protect the rights of users and the companies they interact with on a daily basis, such as banks, mobile phone companies and hotels, etc. "Using a selfie and an identity document, Alice Biometrics intervenes in the online registration process, verifying that it is a legitimate document, that the person behind it is real and that the person is not attacking the system," says Díaz de Otazu.

They work mainly for two types of customers. On the one hand, regulated sectors such as finance, the crypto world, hotels and restaurants or gambling. "For example, every time you go to a hotel, they are obliged to ask you for identification documents so they can send them to the police. Our online help has no waiting times and complies with the regulations. The same goes for the betting sector, which is also obliged to check who its customers are: that they are not on the prohibited list, that they are not minors, etc.," he explains. On the other hand, they also offer their services to shared mobility platforms (motorcycles, cars, etc.). "Generally, when you go to sign up for one of these applications they ask for your driving licence, ID card, etc. Alice Biometrics allows this process to be done in an efficient and fast way, so that the customer can pick up the car and access the service in an automated way."

As Díaz de Otazu points out, the sector must constantly evolve, looking for new solutions and improving its artificial intelligence models. In fact, they are working on new use cases related, for example, to the authentication process for when a user forgets their password and does not have access to either their email or their mobile phone; or to biometric solutions that avoid using two-factor authentication via SMS to deal with a fraud called SIM swapping, which consists of duplicating the SIM card of a person's mobile phone. In the future, they are also looking to expand into new assets, such as detecting fraud in videos and photos circulating on the Internet, in order to protect the creation, authorship, editing and distribution of these materials. 

Global leaders from the local market

Alice Biometrics has shown that it is possible for a small, local company to compete with great impact in a global market, thanks to its cutting-edge technology. "In the last two years, we have verified more than 10 million user identities worldwide," he says.

In fact, this year the prestigious US National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST), part of the US Department of Defence, published the results of the NIST FATE PAD (Presentation Attack Detection) test for Proof of Life providers, in which Alice Biometrics was ranked first among remote video identification companies worldwide, which was a milestone for the company.

In addition, the Galician company was selected by Google to be one of the 15 startups to integrate the first European edition of its Growth Academy programme, which will have a clear focus on supporting the acceleration of European companies focused on cybersecurity.

Looking to the future, the biggest challenge they face as a company is really a global challenge for society as a whole. In the age of digitalisation and the ever-increasing use of new technologies, there is a high level of concern about establishing secure environments so that companies, individuals and organisations can grow without fear of the threats that are often present on the internet. "The number of fraudulent accounts opened in the financial sector three or four years ago was less than 5% and now it has already doubled, and in some sub-sectors such as crypto or neobanks it is over 10%," warns Mikel Díaz de Otazu. "More and more criminals who used to operate in the offline world are being trained to operate in the online world in the most skilled and professional way, because it's very easy. You don't have to go and rob a bank, you can attack banks all over the world from your own home. That is the challenge we are all trying to meet, to minimise the risks that exist on the Internet. That is our challenge, to be able to create a safer digital world and help society in this sense," he concludes.