World, the identity project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has announced the release of a version of World ID designed and built for banks and financial firms. The World ID suite built for banks was announced by co-founder Alex Blania at the Money20/20 conference on Sunday, October 18. The roll out makes it the first time World has packaged its verification tech for a single industry.
The suite bundles three products World already has with the aim of helping institutions to protect themselves from deepfake fraud and AI-based impersonation scams. The World ID app is an identity wallet that stores what the company calls “Proofs” about a user. World ID for Zoom puts a small blue verification badge next to call participants who have been verified as real humans through World’s iris-scanning Orb. Zoom tested the feature in a limited beta starting in April, and it is now open to everyone. World ID for Agents is the final product that lets people transfer their verified status to AI agents working for them.
Deepfake Fraud Is Costing Companies Billions
The age of AI has brought remarkable progress in various facets of everyday life but it has also made fraud far more convincing. With each new model being released, it is becoming harder to tell what is real and what isnt. In recent years, billions of dollars have been siphoned due to the inability to distinguish between bots and humans. World’s announcement post on X leans on the Arup deepfake scam in early 2024.
In 2024, an employee at engineering firm Arup transferred $25.6 million after joining a video call where every other participant was a deepfake. Since then, AI has advanced significantly and is making impersonation increasingly convincing, causing challenges for financial… pic.twitter.com/J06gnULw8H
— World (@worldnetwork) October 19, 2026
World’s press release also pointed to a Deloitte forecast that puts U.S. losses from AI-based fraud at $40 billion by 2027, up from roughly $12.3 billion in 2023.
“Enterprises are requesting individuals provide ‘Proofs’ about themselves to help mitigate fraud and increase trust,” said Sandro Herbig, president of Tools for Humanity, the main developer behind World.
Design Partners Are on Board, But No Bank Yet
World said that Bain Capital, VanEck, Pantera Capital, OpenExchange and Outtake have signed on as initial design partners to support and “explore” how World ID can fit into banking and financial services. A World spokesperson told Fortune that some of these firms will keep Orb devices in their offices so that employees who haven’t been scanned can sign up.
What World didn’t announce is a bank. The release named no lender using the product and gave no pricing. Back in April, VanEck was the only finance firm among the Zoom beta testers.
AI agents are Where World Sees the Bigger Opportunity
The agent tool could end up mattering more than the Zoom badge. Large platforms have mostly treated AI shopping bots as a threat. Amazon sued Perplexity in November 2025 to stop its Comet browser agent from buying things on users’ behalf, and Fortune reports that JPMorgan has also started blocking bots outright.
Tiago Sada, World’s chief product officer, told Fortune that blanket bans will leave those companies behind as agent-driven commerce grows. World’s fix works a bit like a power of attorney. A verified user assigns their credentials to one trusted agent, and merchants can then treat that agent as the person.
World has competition here. Cloudflare launched its own agent ID tool in August, along with a wallet for agents to use.
Regulators Are Still Weighing In on Iris Scanning
Kenya suspended World’s operations in 2023. Spain and Portugal ordered it to stop collecting iris data the following year, and Indonesia froze its permit in May 2025. Banks also tend to move slowly on new identity tech, especially anything involving biometrics and a crypto token.
Sada argues the Orb doesn’t build a central database and that the code is open source and auditable. He likened the early suspicion to how people first reacted to Apple’s Touch ID. The next customer announcement, or a long silence, will say a lot about whether banks agree.
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