“It is not hard to see why the crisis might provide fertile ground for fraud. The combination of financial and health threats<\/a> makes people more vulnerable and creates opportunities for fraudsters,” stated a recent Deloitte article. Cyberattacks are at an all-time high, with IDC predicting global spending on cybersecurity to reach $133.8 billion in 2022. This only reinforces the fact that fraudsters are looking for unique opportunities to exploit COVID-19-related fears and steal valuable information from businesses and consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the crisis hit, many organizations mandated work-from-home policies and many have not yet returned to workplaces. According to Global Workplace Analytics, \u201c56% of the U.S. workforce holds a job that is compatible (at least partially) with remote work<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When life does return to \u201cnormal,\u201d many of these jobs will still be done at home. In fact, many workers prefer that option. There are also significant financial and environmental benefits and studies have shown no losses in productivity from remote work. Global Workplace Analytics estimates that 25-30% of the workforce will work from home on a multiple-days-a-week basis by the end of 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To ensure operations are secure, communications are effective and employees get the support and training they needed requires employers to change processes and procedures. But with many of these processes now fine-tuned, moving forward with remote-work in 2021 and beyond can become standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Stewart Butterfield, CEO and co-founder of Slack, states \u201cthe shift is massive and very consequential: people are making new choices about where they want to live and creating new expectations about flexibility, working conditions and life balance<\/a> that can\u2019t be undone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As in-person social interactions dropped, social media usage saw major growth. At the time the first wave was hitting the U.S., a Harris Poll found that between 46% and 51% of U.S. adults were using social media more<\/a>. Entertainment-focused social platforms were especially popular; TikTok grew weekly users by 75% this year<\/a>. People wanted to be distracted, to fight isolation and boredom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other marketplaces that provided solutions that were in the physical world had to react quickly to the changed dynamics. In the second quarter of 2020, while Uber saw less demand for its ride-share business, Uber Eats revenue grew 113%<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whichever market is being served, the ongoing need to ensure trust and safety<\/a> is essential for any provider; even more so during a pandemic, when people\u2019s underlying need for security is magnified and marketplaces must demonstrate that they have effective protocols and safety standards in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the Global COVID-19 FinTech Market Rapid Assessment Study<\/a>, fintech companies worldwide have been resilient in responding to the challenges of COVID-19. In the first half of the year, transactions grew by 13% overall and the digital asset exchanges, digital payments, digital savings and wealthtech sectors all saw growth of over 20%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unsurprisingly, the economies that were most locked-down saw the most growth; for example, digital payments transaction growth was 50% higher in those countries that had stringent lock-down rules than in less restricted countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Trulioo COO Zac Cohen said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Online transactions and interactions, and access to fintech services<\/a>, are must-haves today, not nice-to-haves. Adoption is currently maybe segmented by certain target populations \u2014 or folks that are more comfortable with certain technology layers. Now this is the only path we need to take, and that\u2019s going to create a huge amount of innovation in very short order.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the global economy. As a result, central governments have created massive amounts of fiat currency. For example, the U.S. Government created over $3 trillion in new funds<\/a> earlier this year, inflating the money supply. Many financial experts expect this to continue and some are looking at safe ways to store value like Bitcoin<\/a>, which has a hard limit of 21 million units that can ever be issued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The price gains of Bitcoin during 2020 have been phenomenal, approaching 300% for the year and interest in decentralized finance (DeFi) has attracted interest from investors and big fintech players. Wall Street veterans such as Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones are now positive on bitcoin and Square and PayPal are adding crypto to their product offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s important for any company in the crypto industry that wants to continue to grow and prosper to seriously consider their compliance requirements \u2014 like the need to provide identifying information<\/a> to help comply with Anti-Money Laundering<\/a> (AML) and Know Your Customer<\/a> (KYC) regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ability to provide remote healthcare services has been fairly limited until this year. But suddenly, these services have ramped up, as patients want to avoid contact with potential virus carriers. This has also driven challenges in properly collecting and managing identity information to verify patient identities for compliance regulations (such as HIPAA), prevent medical identity theft and meet other Know Your Patient<\/a> requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As vaccines are about to be distributed widely, the immunity passports<\/a> debate has been heating up. These tools provide an identity verification check confirming the person is immune to COVID-19. Just as age verification ensures a person is old enough to participate in an age-restricted activity, an immunity verification certifies that the person has been deemed incapable of spreading COVID-19. This debate involves complex legal, social, ethical and technological considerations, and now that proven vaccines are available, it\u2019s no longer theoretical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One news event that drew attention around the world was the U.S. election in November. As results started to be tallied, baseless accusations of voter fraud were widely spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This spurred interest in the topic of digital voting. A technology that can be proven safe and trustworthy, can maintain voter anonymity while ensuring only valid voters participate and can produce results quickly and verifiably, would be a major benefit to democracies around the world. Enabling voters to vote by mobile or web would also make the process quicker and help to increase voter participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s important to note that while some digital voting systems do exist, their widespread acceptance has not happened yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One common thread throughout all these different types of transactions and interactions is the need for a foundation of trust. Online and mobile audiences need to ensure that the services they use keep their private information and payment details secure. Organizations need to ensure that their customers and activities on their services are legitimate, compliant and aren\u2019t fraudulent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This trust must also be formed quickly and seamlessly. While customers want security, they are won\u2019t accept unnecessarily slow or cumbersome onboarding processes<\/a>. As Zac points out, \u201cthat first interaction point that a consumer, an end user, has with your service becomes the most critical piece in the entire relationship.\u201d Many consumers pointed to onboarding as the \u201cmake-or-break\u201d point and it shows a tremendous opportunity for those companies that get it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the course of 2020, Trulioo has been working on helping build these better onboarding processes. We launched EmbedID<\/a>, a low-code identity verification solution that makes it easy for non-technical customers to access the Trulioo GlobalGateway identity network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve made many other advances, offering more country coverage (Nigeria and Ghana<\/a>, Pakistan<\/a>) and data sources, continually improving our back-end systems and significantly updating our ID Document Verification<\/a> and MobileID<\/a> products. We\u2019ve even won a few awards, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n And our COO, Zac Cohen, received Business in Vancouver\u2019s 2020 Forty under 40 award<\/a>. In other executive news, Steve Munford<\/a> was appointed President and CEO and Leigh Ramsden<\/a> joined as CFO.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWork from home became the norm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nMarketplaces adapted<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Fintech continued to grow<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Cryptocurrencies became more prevalent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"digital](\"https:\/\/www.trulioo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/digital-transformation-2020-health.jpg\")
<\/h2>\n\n\n\nDigital health initiatives and vaccine debates swelled<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A hope for digital voting emerged<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Digital onboarding improved<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
2020 and beyond: building trust, privacy and inclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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