Most authentication conversations focus on one question: how to make logins more secure.
In practice, the challenge is broader. How do you reduce fraud, simplify onboarding and improve conversion, without adding more friction for users?
Recent GSMA case studies across banking, trading, and digital services show how network-based authentication is being used to solve all three, not just login security.
Network-based authentication, delivered through telco APIs such as Number Verification and KYC Fill In, allows businesses to verify users and pre-fill identity data using real-time mobile network information.
Instead of relying on user input or SMS OTPs, this approach enables secure authentication, faster onboarding, and lower friction across the entire user journey.
What Problems Does Network-Based Authentication Actually Solve?
Across industries, the same issues tend to appear.
To start with, authentication methods that rely on user input are vulnerable to phishing and social engineering, as the most prevalent fraud tactics today. Moreover, these methods tend to introduce friction into onboarding flows, slow down user acquisition, and decrease user engagement while the manual entry of data by users often leads to errors, failed registrations, and higher support costs.
What’s notable is that these aren’t separate problems. They’re often symptoms of the same underlying limitation: relying on users to prove their identity manually via traditional methods.
How is Network-Based Authentication Different from Traditional Methods?
Instead of asking users to input codes or manually verify their identity, also requiring some wait time, network-based authentication relies on instant and real-time mobile network data.
The Number Verification API checks whether the SIM, device, and mobile network match the number registered with the operator. This happens in the background, without requiring any action from the user.
Banks like ABA in Cambodia and BRI in Indonesia have already applied this approach to move away from user-input-based authentication flows.
This shift, from user input to network-level verification, is what underpins the outcomes seen across these deployments.
Is Network-Based Authentication a Replacement for SMS OTP?
In many deployments, yes, but more accurately, it removes the need for OTP altogether.
Banks like ABA in Cambodia and BRI in Indonesia were both dealing with authentication flows based on SMS one-time passwords that could be exploited through social engineering.
Instead of asking users to input a code, the Number Verification API checks whether the SIM, device, and mobile network match the number registered with the telecom. This happens in the background, without requiring any action from the user.
The impact is measurable.
BRI reports a 70% reduction in social engineering incidents, alongside a higher authentication success rate compared to OTP-based flows.
In Serbia, OTP Banka used the same approach to eliminate phishing-driven account takeovers by removing the possibility of attackers reusing intercepted codes.
This isn’t an additional layer on top of OTP. It replaces one of the most commonly exploited points in the authentication flow.
Does Network-Based Authentication Only Improve Security?
One of the more consistent outcomes across deployments is that removing friction improves both security and the user experience.
When authentication runs silently in the background, users don’t need to wait for codes, switch between apps, or manually enter anything. The result is fewer steps and a seamless UX.
– At BRI, the average login time was cut in half after moving away from SMS-based authentication.
– ABA Bank enables users to register and log in within milliseconds using number verification, without any visible authentication step.
– Tiger Brokers introduced a one-click login flow that removed OTP input entirely, creating a faster and more consistent experience across devices.
None of these changes required users to learn a new behavior. They simply removed unnecessary ones.
How Network-Based Authentication Improves Conversion and Onboarding
This is where the impact extends beyond authentication.
For Tiger Brokers, simplifying the authentication flow led to a 58% increase in mobile registration conversion rates, alongside strong adoption of one-click login.
In a different context, ENPay addressed onboarding friction directly.
By using a KYC Fill In API to verify the user’s phone number and automatically populate registration data, ENPay reduced onboarding time from up to five minutes to under 30 seconds.
At the same time, form errors and failed registrations dropped significantly.
The outcome wasn’t just faster onboarding. It improved conversion, reduced support overhead, and accelerated user adoption.
This highlights an important shift: authentication and onboarding are often part of the same flow, not separate systems.
Is Network-Based Authentication Only for Banks and Fintech?
While many early deployments are in banking and fintech, the underlying problems are not industry-specific.
ENPay is a good example. In the context of digital toll payments, the goal wasn’t primarily fraud prevention, but improving its app’s onboarding speed and user experience to match the service.
Even in this case, verifying phone number ownership and automating user data entry improved both usability and data accuracy.
The same approach applies across any service that depends on user identity, whether the priority is security, conversion, or operational efficiency.
Can Network-Based Authentication Scale Across Markets and Operators?
One of the practical challenges with authentication systems is consistency across regions.
These deployments span Cambodia, Indonesia, Serbia, and Singapore, involving multiple mobile operators and different types of digital services.
What enables this is standardisation.
All implementations are based on CAMARA APIs under the GSMA Open Gateway initiative, allowing enterprises to integrate network-based capabilities in a consistent way, without building custom integrations for each operator.
This is what makes network-based authentication scalable, not just technically, but commercially.
What These Deployments Have In Common
Looking across these deployments, a consistent pattern emerges.
Instead of relying on user input, authentication is anchored in real-time mobile network data. The process runs silently in the background, removing the need for users to enter codes or complete additional steps. As a result, we have reduced friction and strengthened security.
What also becomes clear is a broader shift in how authentication is approached. Rather than being treated as a single feature within an app, it becomes part of a wider system that spans sign-up, onboarding, authentication, and identity verification.
The same network-based approach that verifies a user during login can also be used to pre-fill identity data and streamline registration, allowing businesses to unify authentication and onboarding into a single, more efficient flow.
Across all of these cases, the impact shows up in both technical and business outcomes, from reduced fraud and account takeovers to faster onboarding, higher conversion rates, and improved user engagement.
This is the foundation that IPification provides.
By connecting enterprises directly to mobile operators through standardised APIs such as Number Verification and KYC Fill In, IPification enables this shift from user-driven authentication to network-based identity. Instead of adding more layers for users to navigate, it allows identity to be verified seamlessly, using signals that are already present in the network.
That is what sets this approach apart from traditional methods. It doesn’t try to strengthen user actions. It reduces the need for them.
