The identity verification market is at an inflection point. Five years ago, opening an account online using your ID and a selfie to prove your identity was still somewhat novel. Today, we not only expect this functionality — we want it to be fast and involve a lot less friction. After all, if we’ve already proven our identity, why should we have to do it over and over again?
The Next Frontier of Identity
Enter the concept of reusable identity. The purpose of reusable identity is to enable users to go through identity verification once and be instantly recognized and trusted in the future.
But although reusable identity is a common buzzword, few providers have moved beyond theory. That’s because the depth and scale of the problem is enormous. Implementing a truly effective reusable identity solution requires an intelligent, connected system that continuously learns, adapts, rewards trust, and correctly identifies fraud — despite rapidly evolving technologies that make it easier than ever for criminals to impersonate legitimate consumers.
As a result, only a handful of identity verification providers are ready to meet the moment as we approach the next frontier with reusable identity at scale.
Why Reusable Identity Matters
Reusable identity isn’t simply a trend that consumers will forget about in a couple of years. It is a fundamental shift in the way people do business online.
Traditional identity verification methods force trusted users to repeat the same steps every time they onboard or authenticate. This repetition adds friction, increases abandonment, and erodes trust.
Reusable identity solves these roadblocks by allowing verified users to skip redundant ID steps while maintaining full fraud controls. The result is higher conversions, faster onboarding, and smarter security that adapts to risk in real time. Businesses that continue to rely on traditional identity verification methods will be left behind as customers grow increasingly intolerant of unnecessary friction.
Defining Reusable Identity (and Why Most Get It Wrong)
Many companies equate reusable identity with prefilled forms, credential wallets, or local or siloed identity systems. But true reusable identity is intelligent, dynamic, and rooted in trust signals, not stored credentials. It enables recognition and reverification based on established trust across verified transactions, always under user consent and enterprise control. It’s the bridge between security, convenience, and digital trust at scale.
The Technology Making It Possible
The foundation of reusable identity lies in intelligence. It hinges on the ability to connect signals across transactions, customers, industries, and time to distinguish between legitimate and fraudulent behavior. Key enablers include biometrics, advanced liveness detection, global risk intelligence, and real-time decisioning.
Graph technology can power this intelligence by unifying data from legitimate and fraud interactions across industries, creating a continuously learning model of trust. This intelligence ensures every reuse decision is risk-aware, with built-in seamless fallback to full verification when risk is detected.
The Business Impact
The business impact of reusable identity is immediate. When trusted users can skip unnecessary verification steps, they have a much better experience, and businesses see higher conversions and lower abandonment. Additionally, risk and fraud teams gain stronger, data-backed protection through cross-industry intelligence.
Industries such as gaming, banking, fintech, and e-commerce are seeing the biggest impact, where speed and trust drive competitive advantage. With stiff competition in these industries, reusable identity is quickly becoming essential.
The shift to reusable identity also creates a foundation for ongoing customer relationships. With trust established and instantly reasserted every time the customer interacts with your business, you provide an outstanding user experience that increases loyalty and smooths the path for expansion. For example, if a bank allows an existing checking account customer to open a high-yield savings account with a single click, that customer is much less likely to go through a lengthy account-opening process somewhere else.
Building a Trusted Identity Source
So how exactly are providers implementing reusable identity? Reducing friction is essential, but so are security and data privacy. The best providers understand that true trust requires accountability and intelligence, not open data sharing.
For example, Jumio applies global standards for consent, compliance, and security while connecting identity intelligence across customers. The Jumio Identity Graph — proprietary technology based on tens of millions of cross-customer, cross-industry identities from both legitimate and fraudulent transactions — allows businesses to verify users without exposing data or relying on federated networks. Whereas other providers act as facilitators of data reuse between clients, Jumio acts as the custodian of verified identities under a single security model. By minimizing data sharing and reuse of personal documents, Jumio actually reduces exposure and enhances user privacy. Consumers retain transparency and consent, while enterprises gain a trusted, compliant custodian of digital identity.
Looking Ahead
The future of onboarding will belong to companies that treat identity as a living, intelligent signal of trust, not a point-in-time check. Dynamic workflows should remove ID scans and other high-friction checks for trusted users and introduce just the right amount of checks at the right time for everyone else.
Jumio’s selfie.DONE solution embraces this approach by empowering trusted users to be instantly recognized and reverified across businesses with just a selfie, eliminating the need to rescan their ID for every new onboarding or authentication. It doesn’t just revalidate; it intelligently recognizes and re-verifies users based on real identity intelligence from Jumio Identity Graph.
This means that a user who has already onboarded using their selfie and ID at one selfie.DONE-enabled business could onboard at other selfie.DONE-enabled businesses with just a selfie, skipping the ID scan. Every reuse is risk-aware, combining advanced liveness, fraud detection, and connected intelligence for unmatched protection. This approach removes the friction point intelligently, skipping the ID step only when trust is confirmed.
Frictionless when safe. Full verification when needed. When implemented through a secure, intelligent, global solution like Jumio, reusable identity holds the key to building trust online without the trade-offs.
