Sam Altman's World Takes Proof-of-Human IDs to Banks, Citing $40B AI Fraud Risk

World co-founder Alex Blania has unveiled World ID for banking and finance, a suite of tools that lets financial institutions confirm a real person is behind transactions, trades and customer requests, the company said on Sunday.

Bain Capital, OpenExchange, Outtake, Pantera Capital and VanEck Funds are initial design partners, according to World.

The offering is built on three cryptographic proofs available through the World ID app. Proof of Human establishes that someone is a real and unique person through a one-time visit to one of World's Orb devices. Proof of Presence uses a selfie liveness check on a phone, while Proof of Attributes confirms details such as nationality or age from a government ID, revealing only the requested information.

Banks could use the proofs to require a verified human to approve ACH and wire transfers, or to recover an account, without collecting documents or storing other personal data, World said. AgentKit, a developer toolkit still in beta, lets users delegate certain proofs to AI agents so they can transact on a person's behalf.

The suite also includes World ID for Zoom, which builds on the project's earlier integrations with Zoom and Tinder. Participants verified at one of the project’s Orb devices get a "Human Badge" on their video tile after a live selfie check, and hosts will soon be able to require verification in the waiting room before a call.

World pointed to the case of an employee at engineering firm Arup who wired about $25.6 million in early 2024 after a video call in which every other participant was a deepfake. Deloitte forecasts that AI-enabled fraud losses in the U.S. could reach $40 billion by 2027, up from $12.3 billion in 2023, the company noted.

More than 18 million people hold a Proof of Human ID, according to World, with the World Foundation raising $52.5 million this year to scale the network.

World and privacy regulators

World's iris-scanning model has faced pushback from regulators around the world over its handling of biometric data.

Hong Kong's privacy watchdog ordered the project to stop its iris-scanning operations in 2024, while later that year South Korea's privacy regulator fined the project $830,000. That December, Spain's data protection agency told it to delete all iris scan data.

Last year, a Kenyan court ordered it to delete biometric user data, and Brazil's data protection authority denied its appeal against a ban.