Customer Authentication
Customer Authentication Built to Remove Friction, Not Create It
PCI Pal’s Customer Authentication verifies customers in seconds without lengthy challenge questions. Built for modern contact centers, it uses secure passkey authentication to reduce customer friction and agent effort while helping protect sensitive interactions from fraud.
A Modern Solution Built for Modern Contact Centers
Traditional authentication methods like security questions create friction, increase AHT and operational costs, and rely on information that can be exposed or socially engineered. By establishing trust before sensitive actions like payments or account changes, PCI Pal’s Customer Authentication helps organizations add stronger, simpler verification where it is needed most.
Frictionless Verification
Reduce verification time, cut repetitive checks, and help agents move quicker from authentication to resolution.
Future-Ready Authentication
Bring customer authentication into every journey as contact centers evolve towards more intelligent orchestration.
Real-time Visibility
Provide a real-time authentication result that can guide what happens next.
Stronger Assurance
Deliver phishing-resistant authentication and protect against SIM swap fraud and deepfake impersonation.
Trusted Handoffs
Carry the authentication outcome across channel and agent handoffs, reducing repeated verification.
How It Works
PCI Pal makes identity verification seamless for agents and customers alike, enabling both assisted and automated journeys. Enable human agents to securely authenticate customers during live interactions before proceeding with sensitive requests. Or enable IVRs, virtual agents, and AI agents to securely authenticate customers and progress sensitive requests without or prior to a human intervention. Here’s how our passwordless authentication works in three simple steps:
Customers enroll once by creating a secure passkey using the authentication capabilities available on their device.
When authentication is required, the customer is prompted to verify using their registered passkey. The authentication can be initiated within the relevant customer journey, whether assisted or automated.
A clear success or failure result is returned to the agent, virtual agent, or automated system handling the interaction, helping you determine what happens next.
Why It Matters
Moving away from outdated security questions does more than just stop fraud. It fundamentally improves the experience for both your customers and your agents from the very first interaction.
Identity fraud begins the moment a fraudster attempts to impersonate a legitimate customer. Customer Authentication establishes trust early in the interaction, helping organizations reduce account takeover risk before sensitive actions are ever initiated.
Modern fraud tactics have made static questions increasingly vulnerable while creating unnecessary friction for legitimate customers. Customer Authentication replaces these outdated processes with secure, passwordless verification that’s built for today’s modern threat landscape.
Customers no longer need to remember answers to security questions or repeatedly provide personal information. Instead, they authenticate using the device and authentication method they already use every day, creating a faster and more intuitive experience across every interaction.
Agents no longer have to determine whether a customer “sounds legitimate” or manually navigate lengthy verification procedures. With clear authentication outcomes delivered in real time, they can focus on resolving customer issues rather than administering repetitive security checks.
Shorter authentication workflows reduce average handling time, standardize verification processes, and create consistent customer experiences across teams, channels, and locations. Organizations benefit from improved efficiency while freeing agents to focus on higher-value interactions.
Authentication Built for the Future of CX
As customer engagement becomes more digital, automated, and AI-enabled, organizations need a consistent way to establish trust that can be understood by people and systems alike. As part of PCI Pal’s Secure Engagements Platform, Customer Authentication provides a clear authentication outcome that can travel across the customer journey, helping protect sensitive interactions in both assisted, automated, and agentic environments.
Capabilities That Count
Secure, device-native authentication
Use passkeys based on FIDO2/WebAuthn standards to provide stronger authentication using the customer’s own device, without relying on shared secrets or remembered information.
Flexible across customer journeys
Authenticate customers consistently across assisted and automated channels, with an outcome that can follow the journey and reduce repeated verification when customers move between human agents, IVR, virtual agents, and AI agents.
Visible and auditable authentication signals
Capture clear authentication outcomes and engagement data to support auditability, operational reporting, and a more consistent approach for your agents.
API-first integration
Reduce integration complexity with an API-first approach that makes authentication easier to embed, extend, and scale across customer interactions.
Close the Trust Gap In Every Sensitive Interaction
Customer Authentication is one part of a broader approach to trust. Pair it with Fraud Management to establish identity and assess risk before a sensitive interaction ever reaches a payment, refund, or account change.
Secure & Capture
Securely take payments while keeping sensitive data away from agents, recordings, and internal systems.
Verify & Protect
Confirm identity and reduce risk without adding unnecessary friction to the customer journey.
Trusted by the Most Highly Regulated Industries and the World’s Top Brands
“We’ve fundamentally changed the way we’re handling our customer interactions. We have a new way of taking calls which is integrated with our Salesforce system and connects payments, billed interactions and customer contact in one place. It’s much more user- friendly and suits the way our customers want to provide the information to us – it’s a far better experience for our customers.”
Customer Authentication FAQ
A passkey is a cryptographic credential that lets customers authenticate using security already built into their device, such as Face ID, fingerprint or device PIN. No separate PCI Pal app is required.
Not necessarily. PCI Pal Customer Authentication provides a more modern, passwordless way to authenticate customers, helping organizations move away from static security questions and reduce friction in sensitive interactions.
Yes. PCI Pal Customer Authentication can be triggered within automated journeys such as IVR, chatbots and virtual agents, enabling customers to authenticate without a live agent.