ID verification company Intellicheck is partnering with Agility Credit, an automotive credit bureau reseller, to help dealerships spot identity fraud earlier in a deal, Intellicheck announced Oct. 20.
How it works: Intellicheck’s ID verification checks a customer’s ID before a credit file is pulled.
Agility Credit then adds credit data, device intelligence, and red-flag workflows on top, all on the same platform.
The goal is to catch synthetic identities, stolen identities, and credit-washing attempts at multiple points in the deal, rather than relying on a single check.
It also helps dealers document identity checks for compliance.
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What they’re saying: Darrel Schulte, CEO of Agility Credit, said in the release that threats have evolved.
“Fraud at the dealership has changed,” Schulte said. “Bad actors now walk in with stolen identities and fake IDs good enough to fool the human eye.”
Intellicheck CEO Bryan Lewis said in a release that Intellicheck expects the partnership to “help us grow our automobile dealer scanning volumes.”
“A credit decision should start with confidence in the ID presented, not just the information in a credit file,” Lewis said.
By the numbers: About 0.77% of driver’s licenses presented to Intellicheck are fake, a rate that has stayed “rather consistent” over the years, Lewis told CDG News.
“That might not seem like a high number, but think about the volume of transactions and size of potential loss for each,” he said.
Lewis said fraud attempts show up in two places: test drives where the car never comes back, and full purchases.
Stolen identities come cheap.
A name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, email and phone number sell for about $20 to $30 on the dark web, and a convincing fake license with a fraudster’s face and a victim’s information goes for about $60, he said.
“We find that the fraud rings tend to go where the money is and a car can be a lucrative and easy score,” Lewis said.
At the desk: Dealers run the scan at different points, Lewis said, from building the deal jacket to the F&I office, so the person scanning could be a salesperson, a sales manager or someone in F&I.
In the store, scanning the front and back of a license returns a result in seconds, showing whether it’s good, fake, or good but expired, and whether the printed data matches the barcode.
For remote buyers, a texted link walks the customer through photographing the license, scanning the barcode, and taking a selfie, which takes about 5 seconds to process, he said.
Neither requires “any integration or IT work,” Lewis said.
That makes the ID check a quick first step, done before a credit file is pulled, with Agility Credit’s credit data and red-flag checks picking up from there.
Bottom line: Because fraud can slip into a deal at more than one point, layering checks gives dealers more chances to catch warning signs earlier in the process.
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