Independent audit places Facephi’s identity digital trust verification service on Canada’s public trust registry
VANCOUVER, BC — September 16, 2026 — Canada is in the middle of rebuilding its defences against fraud. Canadians reported losses of more than $704 million in 2025, the highest figure on record, and identity fraud was the most-reported category.
All of which turns a question that used to be technical into a public one: when an institution opens an account for someone it has never met, how does it actually know who that person is, and who has checked? That is where digital trust stops being an abstract idea and becomes something institutions need to evidence.
Facephi’s has been certified under the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework (PCTF) Verified Person Component at LOA2 by the Digital ID and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC), following an independent third-party audit. The service now appears on DIACC’s Trusted List, the public registry of identity services that have successfully met the applicable conformance criteria and passed that audit in Canada.
PCTF certification is not a self-declaration. An accredited auditor examines the service against published criteria, reviews the findings independently before granting any certificate, and publishes the result so anyone can look it up.
For a bank, an insurer or a government department, the practical effect is that a supplier’s assurances become checkable. For the person opening the account, it is one of the few points in the process where an outside party has verified that the protections around their identity work as described.
“Fraud in Canada is not a technology problem waiting for a better algorithm. It is a trust problem, and trust needs evidence,” said José Israel Castro, Identity Solutions Senior Manager North America at Facephi. “Certification is how you produce that evidence. Someone independent examined how we establish that a person is who they say they are, what proof that leaves behind, and whether the proof holds.
“Trust in the digital age isn’t assumed; it’s proven,” said Joni Brennan, DIACC President. “Facephi’s alignment with our highest identity proofing standards reflects how global technology operators can meaningfully contribute to building a more secure and trusted ecosystem for all Canadians.”
The certification covers the Verified Person Component of the framework at assurance level LOA2 the criteria that govern how a service establishes and confirms that a person is who they claim to be.
Establishing identity at the outset, however, is only part of the problem. Fraud increasingly arrives afterwards: synthetic identities that pass a first check, accounts taken over months later, mule networks recruited from legitimate customers. Facephi brings document and biometric verification, behavioural signals, fraud detection and compliance screening together in a single platform, closing the gaps that disconnected point tools leave behind on the premise that identity is a continuous state, not something an institution confirms once at the door and then files away.