Social Impact, Along with Growth, Drives Incode’s Amper

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. -- Nearly a decade ago, Ricardo Amper was certain digital identification would become a major trend. Many industries were embracing digital transformation, and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 accelerated this shift beyond his expectations. The global demand for remote and contactless ID verification fast-tracked the vision he had foreseen five years earlier.

What Amper hadn’t anticipated was the profound social impact of the recognition systems he co-developed with three other entrepreneurs at San Francisco-based Incode.

“The social impact wasn’t something I fully grasped at the beginning,” Amper shared in an interview. “Now, it’s what excites me most about the business.”

Amper referred to how Incode’s evolving digital identification and fraud prevention tools, which he began developing in 2015, are helping various industries eliminate fraudulent claims. As a result, they are opening up access to a range of networks —like fintech mobile applications— and products that were previously out of reach for millions.

For instance, a credit card company that implemented Incode’s fraud prevention system recently eliminated a significant portion of its fraudulent clients. By significantly reducing these fake claims, the company has been able to offer better terms to millions of legitimate customers, improving their access to credit and other financial services.

“The moment credit providers realized they could accurately distinguish between fraudulent and legitimate clients at scale and without any friction for the user, they began lowering interest rates and relaxing credit requirements,” Amper recalled. “That’s when we understood our systems were not just preventing fraud but also promoting financial inclusion and, ultimately, driving social development.”

Incode, Amper’s brainchild, evolved from his initial plan to create a photo-sharing social network, originally called Flashback. He and his three co-founders — Jovan Jovanović, a Serbian math and computer specialist; Alex Golunov, a Russian facial recognition expert; and his sister, Mariana Amper, who specialized in finance — developed tools to recognize faces in photos and identify those whose pictures had been taken. Once identified, the photos were shared instantly with the owner’s contacts via mobile phones.

That plan, however, faced a major setback when Facebook restricted access to user identities. The infamous misuse of data by Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 US presidential election shut the door on Incode’s original vision. The company could no longer match names and data with photos.

Two coincidental events helped Incode then pivot from a photo-sharing platform to the leading ID verification and fraud prevention company it is today. First, Apple was developing a facial recognition tool in 2017 to unlock its devices. Incode’s privacy and ID recognition expertise caught Apple’s attention, and the tech giant began promoting the company’s developments. Around the same time, a Mexican bank approached Incode, seeking to learn more and maybe utilize its facial recognition technology.

At the time, with funds running low, Amper realized after discussions with peers and executives that Incode’s two years of work on ID recognition technology had given the company a distinct advantage. He saw that their innovative processes could be applied across a wide range of industries, from financial services and entertainment to healthcare and government.

“When the CEO of a Mexican bank asked about facial recognition technology, I thought, ‘This isn’t my business.’ But as I started to explore the world of identity verification, we moved fast—very fast,” Amper explained. “We said, ‘Let’s see what product we can build,’ and quickly pivoted to offering ID recognition and verification tools.”

That shift in focus paid off. Incode is now generating over $100 million in annual revenue, with plans to multiply that figure tenfold in the coming decade. The company is currently processing 500 million identities and aims to double that number in the same period.

To achieve its ambitious revenue and technical goals, Incode is investing heavily in new technologies to combat evolving threats. Many of these threats arise from the same Artificial Intelligence (AI) it uses to detect fraud, but that is now being employed to try and deceive its own ID verification systems. Deepfakes, in particular, are becoming more sophisticated, making accurate detection critical.

The financial struggles Amper experienced a few years ago are now a distant memory. Incode has secured more than US$200 million in funding from various venture capitalists over the past three years and is selling its ID verification and fraud prevention tools in over 150 countries.

Amper hopes that the two core principles he has followed will continue to guide Incode through a rapidly changing landscape: maintaining a top-notch team and continuously building products that add value to clients and society.

“In any business, but especially in technology, things move so fast and barriers to entry are so low that one essential skill is mental flexibility. You must be ready to recalibrate, have the confidence to do it, and the humility to admit when you’ve made a mistake and need to change,” said Amper, reflecting on the wisdom of his late father, a self-made businessman who passed away but taught him to follow his dreams. His mother also instilled in him the importance of balancing self-confidence with humility.