Biometrics and facial recognition

Biometrics covers verification methods based on what a person is, rather than what they know or what they hold: face, fingerprint, iris, voice. In an onboarding journey, facial recognition compares the selfie taken by the user with the photograph on their identity document, to confirm that the person presenting the document is indeed its holder. This check is systematically paired with liveness detection, which rules out photos, videos, masks and deepfakes. Biometric data is sensitive data under the GDPR: processing it requires an appropriate legal basis, a specific purpose and a limited retention period.