The Digital Executive | Ep 1142

Guest: Kaarel Kotkas, Founder & CEO of Veriff
Date: November 9, 2025
Title: Building Digital Trust: Kaarel Kotkas on the Future of Identity Verification

Episode Overview

In this insightful 10-minute conversation, host Brian from Coruzant Technologies welcomes Kaarel Kotkas—visionary founder and CEO of Veriff—to discuss the future of online identity verification, digital trust, and the challenges and opportunities as AI and fraud techniques evolve. Kaarel shares his personal journey from a rural Estonian farm to global tech leadership, explains the technical and philosophical elements behind building robust digital verification systems, and outlines a compelling vision for a more inclusive, digitally trusted world.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Origin Story: From Hacking Online Orders to Veriff’s Birth

• Kaarel’s early experience with the flaws of digital ID checks: As a teenager on a remote Estonian island, he successfully edited his ID online to circumvent age restrictions—a formative incident that revealed systemic limitations.
• Years later, testing identity verification for Wise (formerly TransferWise) reignited his interest:

  “Let me just test out a trick that I did when I was a kid. And then I found out that back in 2015 the similar issues were still present.” (03:00, Kaarel)

• The realization that compliance-driven, photo-based verification was easily outsmarted led him to envision a model built around:
  • Video verification from start to finish
  • Device and network fingerprinting
  • Behavioral data insights

  “Leveraging over thousands of data points per session enables you to give so much more accurate decisions compared to three pictures like selfie and document front and back alone.” (04:20, Kaarel)

2. Why Digital Verification Can Surpass Face-to-Face

• Human bias in physical checks:

  “We are subjective by nature... It’s so much easier to outsmart a bouncer or someone on just a plastic paper that looks okay.” (05:39, Kaarel)

• Digital = more data & objectivity:
  • Automated systems aggregate diverse signals for scalable, repeatable, and more accurate results.
  • Example: Online systems can tie identity attempts to devices and networks, increasing auditability and accountability.

  “The more information points you have, the more highly you can automate it with accuracy.” (06:44, Kaarel)

• Physical vs. Digital accountability:
  • In-person fraud often escapes with minimal consequence (e.g., running away from a banker).
  • Online verification accumulates evidence, making post-fraud investigation and conviction more feasible.

  “I wouldn’t want to be the one pretending to be you behind my personal computer... we’ll have also much more insights and information that will lead to conviction...” (07:39, Kaarel)

3. The Automation-Human Review Balance in a World of Deepfakes

• Strategic automation:
  • Deterministic (rules-based) and probabilistic (machine learning/AI) models are deployed depending on context.
  • Continuous rule/AI refinement comes from pattern analysis at scale—enabled by millions of verifications daily.
• Importance of the Human-in-the-Loop:

  “We as humans are going to be essential forever as long as we are verifying humans.” (10:43, Kaarel)

  • Human creativity (“hacker mindset”) is vital for detecting new, creative fraud techniques that machines aren’t yet trained on.
  • Humans excel when fraudsters become inventive; machines excel at repetitive, high-volume analysis.

  “When it becomes more creative—as fraudsters do—we also need to have great events, a little bit like a hacker mindset as humans to really pick the similar patterns... and build new automations upon.” (10:21, Kaarel)

4. Vision for a Borderless, Trust-Based Digital Identity Ecosystem

• Current reliance on government-issued IDs is outdated:

  “Today the best way for verifying people’s identities are our government issued IDs... but it's still not meeting the complexity that our real identities are.” (12:04, Kaarel)

  • Government IDs are static, often defined by birthplace, and carry geopolitical limitations.
• Digital trust as a dynamic pattern:

  “I really want to make sure that we can leverage and build up our real identity... when we've been good actors across our Internet interactions then this should be building up the pattern of trust. And the pattern of trust also becomes so much stronger source of our true identities than government issued ID can be.” (13:31, Kaarel)

• Long-term ambition:
  • Move towards industry-wide collaboration on fraud prevention and digital trust.
  • Reduce friction for honest users; improve inclusive access to services regardless of geography.
  • Dream:

    “My dream is to build towards the world where... passports will be issued by verif, not only by the governments, to truly enable people equal access to services, location independently, no matter where they're from...” (14:23, Kaarel)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On foundational inspiration:

  “When I was asked to upload my ID and it wasn’t accepted because I wasn’t 18... I just changed my date of birth and everything and all the orders got confirmed.” (02:17, Kaarel)

• On the shortcomings of physical verification:

  “If I’m asking from the crowd, please do raise your hand who had fake ID... there are very many which are raised.” (05:32, Kaarel)

• On the irreplaceable role of human reviewers:

  “We as humans are still better on really detecting from the biased dataset additional patterns that we need to review which will become part of the next model training...” (09:53, Kaarel)

• On the vision for digital inclusivity:

  “The tech revolution and the Internet economy... enabled us to access the whole world from distance... yet our identities are still covered with the borders.” (12:58, Kaarel)

Timeline & Key Timestamps

• [02:01-04:35] — Kaarel’s backstory and Veriff’s founding insight
• [05:26-08:03] — Why digital verification can be more secure than face-to-face methods (human bias, digital objectivity)
• [08:49-11:05] — Balancing machine automation with human creativity in fraud detection
• [11:52-14:42] — Vision for the future: pattern of trust, beyond government IDs, borderless digital identity

Conclusion

This fast-paced episode with Kaarel Kotkas delves deeply into how modern identity verification can deliver both greater security and inclusivity through data-rich, AI-powered systems—supported by irreplaceable human ingenuity. Kaarel’s ambition is not just to beat fraud, but to transform our very concept of digital identity into something global, fluid, and fundamentally trustworthy:

“Passports will be issued by Veriff, not only by the governments, to truly enable people equal access to services, location independently, no matter where they’re from.” (14:23, Kaarel)