ID-Pal has been named Security Innovation of the Year at the 2026 Payments Awards, recognising its work helping payments and financial services firms protect customers, prevent identity fraud and strengthen digital verification.
The recognition comes at a time when payment providers are facing increasingly sophisticated security threats. The rapid rise of generative AI has made it easier for fraudsters to create synthetic identities, manipulate genuine documents and produce convincing forgeries designed to get past standard verification checks.
According to UK Finance’s Annual Fraud Report 2026, criminals stole £1.28 billion through payment fraud in 2025, a 4% increase on the previous year.
As fraud tactics become harder to spot, payment providers need stronger ways to establish that customers are who they claim to be. This means looking beyond basic identity checks and using technology that can detect manipulated documents, identify suspicious activity and verify genuine customers without making the process unnecessarily difficult.
For payment providers, knowing who they are dealing with is an important part of managing fraud risk. Strong identity verification and customer due diligence processes help firms establish that customers are genuine, identify potential risks earlier and make informed onboarding decisions.
ID-Pal helps organisations carry out these checks through a single identity verification platform, bringing together document verification, biometric checks, database searches, AML screening and KYB checks. Its configurable approach allows firms to build verification processes around their own requirements, while reducing the need for manual checks and disconnected systems.
The continued enhancement of ID-Pal’s advanced fraud detection capabilities, like Injection Attack Detection, and its multi-award-winning ID-Detect solution demonstrates ID-Pal’s commitment to leveraging the latest technologies to identify and combat emerging fraud threats.
Sara West, Chief Commercial Officer at ID-Pal, commented: “We’re delighted to receive this recognition at the Payments Awards. Payments providers are under pressure from several directions: keeping up with regulatory requirements, managing fraud risk and delivering a straightforward experience for genuine customers.
“Our focus has always been on making identity verification and compliance easier for payments companies to manage without adding unnecessary friction to the customer journey. That means giving these global enterprises the tools to manage risk decisions, reduce manual work and build robust automated processes around customer onboarding.
“This award is a great recognition of the work our team is doing and the trust our customers place in us.”
