British Council picks Daon TrustX to tackle English test ID fraud

The British Council has contracted Dublin-based identity verification firm Daon to deploy its TrustX platform across what it describes as one of the world's most widely administered English-language testing programmes. The deal covers millions of verification transactions over a multi-year term, with scope to extend the platform to additional British Council digital services, including its English Online offering.

Under the agreement, Daon's xProof capabilities will be used at multiple stages of the test-taker journey: initial registration, entry at test centres, and re-verification checks following breaks and re-tests. The solution combines document verification, facial comparison, liveness detection, and chip reading from identity documents, backed by round-the-clock support and a manual review fallback for edge cases.

The deal

Anthony Nicols, Director of Product at the British Council, said: "Identity is the cornerstone for high-stakes exams, and in Daon we've found a partner that helps us embed trust throughout the entire testing journey."

The British Council is a UK public body established in 1934 and governed by Royal Charter. Its testing programmes are accepted by governments in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand and recognised by more than 12,500 organisations worldwide, including immigration authorities, employers, and universities. In 2024-25, the organisation reached approximately 599 million people through its cultural relations and education work.

Daon was selected following a multi-phase procurement process that required vendors to meet the UK Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF), a government-backed certification standard covering biometric authentication, document validation, and operational practices. Compliance with DIATF was a stated condition of tender, making it a meaningful differentiator in the selection rather than an optional accreditation.

Market context

The identity verification market has expanded rapidly as remote and hybrid testing became entrenched during and after the pandemic. High-stakes credentialling, where results carry immigration, employment, or academic consequences, represents a particular pressure point: a single fraudulent pass can have material cross-border effects, and testing bodies face reputational and legal exposure if verification lapses.

Daon competes in a market that includes AU10TIX, Jumio, Onfido (now part of Entrust), and a number of specialist proctoring-adjacent vendors. Differentiation increasingly centres on the ability to orchestrate identity checks across the full user journey rather than at a single enrolment gate, a positioning Daon has emphasised with its TrustX platform. Hyperscalers including Microsoft and AWS also offer identity and liveness components, though typically without the sector-specific compliance and consultancy wrapper that specialist vendors provide.

Regulatory read-across

The DIATF compliance requirement embedded in the British Council tender is part of a broader UK government push to standardise digital identity across public-facing services. The framework is operated by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and sits alongside the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 as part of the UK's post-Brexit identity infrastructure. Organisations procuring identity services for high-assurance public-sector contexts are increasingly treating DIATF certification as a baseline rather than a premium.

For Daon, the British Council contract is a reference deployment in a regulated, globally visible environment. Winning mandates in the public-sector education space tends to carry weight in subsequent procurement decisions across government and financial services, where trust in the supplier's audit trail and standards compliance is as important as the underlying technology performance.