As is already evident, users’ financial relationships are becoming increasingly fragmented across multiple providers, accounts, and platforms. A single person may interact with banks, fintechs, digital wallets, payment service providers (PSPs), and other services, and every new connection adds another point at which organizations must verify that the person carrying out a transaction is truly who they claim to be.
Open Finance multiplies these connections and interaction points. In this environment, identity plays a central role in security well beyond onboarding, making stronger identity controls increasingly important.
According to TransUnion, the global rate of suspected digital fraud attempts in 2025 was 3.8%, while attempted account takeover increased 37% between 2024 and 2025.
In addition, 8.3% of digital account creation attempts were suspected of fraud, and 26% of consumers said they had lost money to digital fraud over the previous year.
A report from LexisNexis Risk Solutions, meanwhile, found that the global attack rate increased 8% in 2025 and identified synthetic identities, bots, and account takeover among the key threats.
Fraud is not only evolving; it is adapting to the digitalization of services. That is why embedded finance solutions and Open Finance initiatives need to incorporate a broader range of signals to assess risk and strengthen security.
In Latin America, TransUnion reported that 41% of adults said they had been targeted by digital fraud in 2025. At the same time, corporate investment in fraud mitigation reduced the rate of suspected digital fraud attempts by 46% between 2024 and 2025. Even so, suspicious activity remains concentrated around account creation and login.
In this environment, detecting a fraudulent transaction is no longer enough. Organizations also need to determine whether the identity behind that transaction can be trusted.
Mobile identity APIs, or Mobile ID APIs, make it possible to incorporate signals from the mobile network—such as phone number, SIM, device, or location—into real-time authentication and fraud prevention decisions. They do not replace existing security mechanisms; rather, they complement them with an additional layer of trust.
With these solutions, identity can be evaluated at different stages of the customer lifecycle rather than only during onboarding. They also enable organizations to apply policies that strengthen controls when risk signals appear, without subjecting every user to the same level of friction.
For example, the Number Verification API makes it possible to verify in real time that the phone number being used to access an application matches the number associated with the SIM in the device from which the user is connecting.
One of its main advantages is that verification can take place silently. Instead of asking the user to complete an additional step, such as entering a one-time password (OTP) received by SMS, the application can query a signal that already exists within the mobile network.
The SIM Swap API, meanwhile, enables organizations to determine whether a phone line has recently undergone a SIM change—an important signal for preventing potential account takeover attacks.
The infrastructure needed to use these signals as part of security systems is already being deployed commercially across Latin America. According to GSMA, as of December 2025, 11 operators or operator groups had committed to GSMA Open Gateway, representing more than 90% of the region’s mobile market by connections.
These APIs turn information available within operators’ networks into signals that other services can use in real time, helping drive collaboration among telecom operators, banks, and fintechs in areas such as identity verification, payment authentication, onboarding, and fraud prevention.
GSMA highlights the case of Lydia Solutions, which uses Number Verification to automatically authenticate tens of thousands of users every day. According to the report, the solution reduced latency by up to 50% compared with previous authentication mechanisms, while OTP-based social engineering attacks were virtually eliminated.
At Plusmo, we work with the fintech ecosystem by providing a suite of mobile identity APIs designed to strengthen trust in transactions through identity authentication and protection against fraudulent activity.
