Revolutionizing Identity Management Through Vector Technology
Unico has established itself as a powerhouse in biometric verification and authentication, addressing critical challenges in identity management and fraud prevention across global markets. With nearly two decades of experience in Brazil, Unico serves over 800 companies, including major financial institutions and retailers, and has facilitated more than 1.2 billion digital identity authentications since 2021.
The company’s impressive credentials include preventing an estimated $14 billion in fraud by 2023 and achieving a valuation exceeding $2.6 billion, making it Latin America’s second most valuable SaaS company. Backed by prestigious investors like General Atlantics, SoftBank, and Goldman Sachs, Unico was recognized as the third most innovative company in Latin America by Fast Company in 2024.
The Power of Vector Search in Identity Verification
As Unico expands globally, its vision extends beyond traditional ID verification to create the world’s premier identity network. Google Cloud’s Spanner database has become instrumental in achieving this ambitious goal, particularly through its vector search capabilities.
Vector search technology enables powerful 1:N search functionality—the ability to match a single face against millions or billions of others with remarkable precision. This technology presents significant technical challenges that Unico has overcome through Spanner’s capabilities:
- Semantic retrieval: Vector embeddings allow Unico to identify matches based on deeper semantic relationships rather than exact matches, improving verification quality.
- Diversity and relevance: Algorithms like Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) ensure reliable fraud detection by balancing result diversity and relevance.
- Multimodal applications: Vector search supports multiple data types (text, images, audio), enabling complex identity verification scenarios.
- Hybrid search: Combined similarity search with metadata filters delivers context-sensitive results based on factors like region or user preferences.
Why Spanner Was the Ideal Choice
For Unico, Spanner offered several critical advantages:
- Integrated vector search support, eliminating the need for separate specialized databases
- Transactional guarantees for operational data
- Consistent, fresh vector search results
- Horizontal scalability to support massive growth
- GRPC support, geo partitioning, and multi-region configuration
- RAG and LLM integration capabilities
- High availability (99.99% SLA) with maintenance-free architecture
Impressive Real-World Results
Unico’s implementation of Spanner vector search has yielded remarkable outcomes. The company currently operates 1:N services in Brazil and Mexico, storing over 1 billion facial embeddings in Spanner. This infrastructure delivers low latency at high percentiles, processes 840 requests per minute, and achieves 96% precision/recall accuracy.
Growth continues at an astonishing pace, with approximately 35 million new faces processed monthly. As Unico expands its customer base and explores international markets, Spanner’s scalability and Google Cloud’s ecosystem provide the foundation for delivering innovative solutions that build trust between people and companies worldwide.
Visit the Google Cloud Blog for more details about Unico’s implementation of Spanner Vector Search