Launch of Service to Ensure Fast and Reliable Online Identity Verification

ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Tatsushi Shingu, President and CEO; hereinafter "CTC") today started offering a reliable and quick identity verification service for various services. The service integrates our SELMID identity integration management platform with Okta, Inc.'s (headquartered in San Francisco, U.S.A.) Okta Customer Identity Cloud (Okta CIC), which provides multifunctional identity management functions for B2C/B2B applications and Web services. With initial cost starting at 500,000 yen (excluding tax) and monthly fee starting at 272,000 yen (excluding tax), we will provide the service mainly to companies offering B2C web services and aim to achieve sales of 300 million from all businesses using SELMID within one year.

In recent years, more and more stringent online authentication has been adopted to prevent unauthorized access, including identity theft. However, the development of such authentication functions and the process of user identity verification before using services have become more complex because of this, and thus there is a growing demand for improving efficiency in development and convenience in user identity verification.

The new service is offered by integrating Okta CIC, which solves such authentication issues and reduces the burden on developers, and SELMID, whose "Carrier Identity Verification" function enables identity verification using mobile phone subscriber information. When using an application that requires identity verification, the user information is matched with the information provided for their mobile phone contract to ensure a reliable and quick identity verification. As the first step, the service will be offered for authentication of users of NTT DOCOMO, INC. but the service coverage will be expanded to other phone carriers.

Okta CIC is a platform for B2C/B2B applications and web services with multiple authentication functions such as SNS account connection and Single Sign-On. Use of SELMID’s "Carrier Identity Verification" function on Okta CIC easily achieves a mechanism for highly reliable identity verification based on the contract information of mobile phone lines. This functionality can be downloaded by application developers from the Marketplace ^(*1), a catalog of Okta CIC functions, and easily customized and incorporated into applications as needed.

The service also improves convenience for application users by eliminating the need to upload identification documents and enter personal information.

CTC has been providing SELMID since 2018. The service is offered as IDaaS (Identity as a Service) with functions for account management and authentication of students and members and has been used by many educational institutions and corporations. Based on our accumulated expertise from the experience, we will enhance SELMID’s Carrier Identity Verification function utilized on Okta CIC.