Shufti's Shahid Hanif Weighs In on Onboarding Friction, AI-Driven Fraud

Shufti founder Shahid Hanif has weighed in on a growing tension in digital identity verification: the friction users face during account opening versus the industry's need to guard against increasingly sophisticated fraud. As banks, fintechs and other digital services push more of their onboarding online, lengthy or repetitive verification steps often drive prospective customers to abandon the process, even as fraud rings exploit stolen or fabricated identities to slip through the same checks—leaving providers to balance convenience against security.

Hanif said the rapid spread of generative AI is making deepfakes and synthetic identity fraud far more convincing, undermining verification methods that once relied on simple document or selfie checks. He argued that financial and digital service providers now need to layer in stronger fraud-detection technology without adding friction back into the onboarding journey, framing security and user experience not as a trade-off but as goals that must be pursued together.