Asinine requirement by whatever risk management firm they use. A selfie provides nothing in terms of lasting security while simultaneously adding permanent risk.
Have you ever considered that it’s a front? You may think that store that never has customers is just run incompetent business people, but in reality the real objective is not the one you believe it to be, and it’s actually great if you were to refuse understanding that.
I've found that framing topics like this as primarily a pretext for different motives is a sure-fire way to be ignored by people you may want to convince.
As always, the goal in convincing others is to take someone from their current understanding and bring them closer to yours. You can't get there if you don't start the topic at their current understanding of it.
> they accept money and direct deposit still with no KYC. But to get the money out? Oh no! We need a picture of your face!
Unauthorized deposits aren't nearly as much of a concern as unauthorized withdrawals, right? I'd imagine that there are far fewer malicious actors that try to deposit money into random bank accounts than there are ones that try to withdraw money from random bank accounts.
> And there’s no option for going in person.
Won't an in-person bank also take pictures of you via security cameras? I don't really understand your objection here, could you elaborate?
A bank's security camera feed isn't likely to be sold to dozens of companies.
It is all but guaranteed for Internet-based facial recognition services.
Hacked facial recognition data already is reportedly being used by scammers to not only bypass bank security but also to impersonate people to target their loved ones.
There is no lasting security gain by providing a selfie. There is a lasting security and privacy loss, however.
Additionally - furtherance of facial recognition technology would impact travelling to foreign jurisdictions.
One of the most common ways foreign travellers get flagged when travelling internationally is for social media posts made under their own name that their destination country's government may not like. Traditionally if you've kept yourself pseudo-anonymous, you've largely been safe. But if we get to a point where pseudo-anonymous accounts are associated with pictures of people's faces, it will become significantly less pleasant to travel internationally for a lot more people.
It used to be that you could expect to not have your likeness captured and transmitted to third parties for their AI model training and who knows what other nefarious purposes.
It seems like all expectation of privacy and anonymity evaporated in the last 5 years.
Having just gone through the annual KYC checks required by my bank/s I don't think this opinion stands universally.
Can also confirm to open an account I need to provide a live selfie and verifiable government ID.