Leaving Your Wallet at Home
Published in January 2018, the ID4D programme’s “Technical Landscape for Digital Identification” report covers some helpful information for those planning digital identification schemes.
A lot of the work of YuTru will be based on and include use of open and international standards and protocols, to avoid any kind of vendor lock-in. Assessment of the individual technologies that can be used to create the digital identification platform will be made and the “Technology Landscape for Digital Identification” report provides a comprehensive and well-structured methodology for such an assessment (see Table 6 on Page 95).
Of most relevance today, and something that has become the default way of thinking about digital ID in other parts of the world, particularly in Europe, is the use of the mobile handset to carry an end user’s digital identification token – the token or credential is an essential part of a digital identification and makes up about 40% of the total cost of the system.
As mobile handsets continue to fall in price and ‘dumb phones’ are rapidly replaced by low-cost ‘feature phones’ and ‘smartphones’, there is a compelling financial case to be made to avoid the issuance of a physical digital identification credential. Instead of issuing and managing say a contactless smart card which the end user presents each time they wish to identify themselves, a mobile-based identification credential holds the ID electronically inside an applet which runs on an electronic subscriber identification module or e-SIM within the phone.
Known as mobile ID or m-ID, a registered end user can receive their digital identification token over an encrypted communications channel (sometimes referred to as “over-the-air” or OTA) at the press of a button and immediately after being registered successfully.
End users don’t have to worry about carrying a credential around in their wallet. And as biometrics are increasingly the norm on feature-phones and smartphones, their credentials are unusable unless the phone is unlocked by a biometric scan. m-ID is convenient for both the identity provider and the end user.
The process for obtaining an e-SIM, of course, like for the physical SIM card, must require full knowledge of the end user prior to issuance.
If YuTru adopts m-ID tremendous cost savings can be made, end user convenience can improve, security enhanced, and the speed at which end users can be registered can be orders of magnitude faster than if a physical credential is used.
For more information on the role of mobile ID in the YuTru scheme contact the scheme commissioner by email.