Is your face still a secure password for your bank account?

Facial recognition has long been marketed as a secure and convenient way to verify identity, especially in banking and fintech. But with the rapid evolution of deepfake technology, even your most personal credential—your face—is now at the risk of being copied, manipulated, and misused.

Deepfakes are hyper-realistic digital forgeries created using Artificial Intelligence, which have already been used to trick voice authentication systems and bypass video KYC (Know Your Customer) processes. The next target is facial biometrics, considered by many as the last line of defence in digital authentication and transaction approval.

With AI now capable of replicating facial expressions, eye movements, and even realistic blinking, how secure is facial recognition really?

"Scams like these are becoming increasingly sophisticated because they no longer rely on stolen identities—they exploit real, verified users," says Amit Relan, Director and co-founder of mFilterIt, a fraud detection and cybersecurity firm. "Fraudulent transactions often appear legitimate, making it easy for them to slip through traditional rule-based systems. That’s why there’s a growing need to overhaul internal fraud analytics. Legacy systems must evolve into dynamic, real-time intelligence capable of spotting behavioural anomalies."

Relan emphasises the importance of collaborations: banks, fintech startups, and payment service providers must join forces to proactively monitor, detect, and block suspicious fund movements before fraud occurs.

Deepfakes vs facial recognition

Facial recognition is particularly vulnerable to deepfake attacks during onboarding and video KYC processes. For instance, a fraudster could use a high-quality deepfake video of a real person to impersonate them during remote account verification, potentially gaining access to sensitive financial information and even executing transactions.

While many systems rely on liveness detection, such as requiring users to blink or move their heads, deepfake technology is rapidly advancing to mimic these subtle actions, making it harder to distinguish between real and fake inputs.

"If we want facial recognition to remain a trusted authentication method, we need to go beyond simplistic detection tools," says Vijender Yadav, Founder and CEO of Accops, a secure access solutions provider. "The answer lies in adopting multi-layered liveness assessments, intelligent systems that examine deeper behavioural and biometric cues to verify whether a user is real or digitally generated."

Yadav warns that even strong facial verification is not foolproof when used in isolation. "Its true strength is unlocked only when facial recognition is part of a robust multi-factor authentication (MFA) framework. One that includes contextual awareness, behavioural patterns, and a Zero Trust approach to identity management," he says. "This is a continuous race between attackers and defenders. To keep up, we need to use AI to combat AI, which means developing adaptive systems that can outsmart deepfakes in real time."

The bottom line

Your face may still open your bank account today, but it might not guarantee safety tomorrow. As deepfakes become more convincing and accessible, the line between genuine and fake grows dangerously thin. The future of secure banking doesn’t lie in abandoning facial recognition, but in strengthening it through smarter AI, layered defences, and a collective commitment to staying one step ahead.