The APIs are intended to help online businesses combat fraud and stop digital identity theft
France’s four main mobile operators – Bouygues Telecom, Free, Orange and SFR – are joining forces to help app developers and enterprises tackle online fraud and protect mobile customers’ digital identities. This is part of the global GSMA Open Gateway initiative.
The operators are launching two network APIs for the French market – know your customer (KYC) Match and SIM Swap. Both comply with the new CAMARA standard designed to align specifications across mobile operators.
According to the publicity, France is the first country in the world where all four major operators are launching the API called KYC Match, which strengthens how online businesses can verify new customers’ identities. Some of the operators are also making Number Verification available to the developer community.
Booming market
France has seen a 37% increase in online transactions since the Covid pandemic, totalling €2.35 billion in 2023, with 77% of them were carried out on mobile devices. Alongside this, 80% of French companies say they have experienced attempted online fraud and 45% f the companies said online fraud has increased over the last year.
The number of digital identity thefts has risen by 40% over the past four years according to the French Ministry of Interior. The new APIs will help protect consumers’ mobile identities by adding an additional layer of defence against fraudsters.
The APIs have been developed and tested in the French market with financial institutions, such as BforBank (the online branch of Credit Agricole) or Fortuneo, (subsidiary of Credit Mutuel Arkéa) which use KYC Match to screen new customers in partnership with DQE Software. More than 20 companies in France already use telco APIs to help prevent fraud in the shape of taking over accounts and check customer identities during transactions and onboarding.
The two services, or APIs, that the French operators are making available to enterprise developers, are:
- KYC Match allows businesses to cross-check information provided by customers against verified records maintained by the user’s mobile network operator, as part of their know your customer process. This cross-check can include details like mobile phone number, name, post code, address, birth date and email address. Importantly, no Personal Identifiable Information (PII) is shared in the process, ensuring users’ privacy while enabling secure and accurate verification.
- SIM Swap is to check whether a given phone number has recently changed SIM cards. This helps mitigate account takeover attacks, in which fraudsters take control of the account owner’s SIM card using social engineering techniques and stolen personal data. For example, at the time of a financial transaction, a financial institution can check whether the relationship between the customer’s phone number and SIM card has been recently changed, helping them decide whether to approve the transaction or not.
The operators intend to include a third API in their joint effort, which some are already providing, called:
- Number Verification can be “seamlessly and automatically activated” to verify a user’s identity instead of relying on SMS. This is improves the user’s experience and mitigates potential issues, like users not receiving the SMS or struggling to implement the code sent via SMS while engaged in another activity on their phone.
The French operators are aiming for a commercial launch in the first half of 2025. They will be discussing their launch plans today with the GSMA at the Apidays Paris 2024 developer conference, as well as at MWC Barcelona in March 2025.
GSMA Open Gateway
The GSMA Open Gateway initiative is intended to facilitate the design of digital products so they can operate seamlessly on all devices, regardless of the country or operator. Since launch last year, 67 mobile network groups, representing a total of 278 networks and three-quarters of mobile connections have joined the initiative alongside 26 channel partners.
Developers can take advantage of the network capabilities offered by mobile operators using APIs which allow developers to easily plug their services into these network capabilities. The service APIs are available through the CAMARA repository, an open-source project run by the Linux Foundation which is a fundamental part of the GSMA Open Gateway initiative.