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Papua New Guinea is experiencing a surge in businesses and customers transacting and interacting online. Use of e-commerce shifts business from face-to-face transactions with conventional cash, to online transactions using digital methods to identify the parties and digital payment technologies to pay for goods and services. A vital part of this digital transformation is that parties trust each other.

When you’re face-to-face with a customer and they make a physical payment, trust doesn’t matter so much. After all, if you have the cash in hand, and the customer has the product, there is no risk of not being paid. But, what happens if that same transaction is online and over some distance and between parties that don’t know each other? Even in the case where the other party says they are someone you know, e.g. I am your bank, how do you know with absolute certainty over the Internet?

Digital trust only comes from an ability to prove that the identity you claim and assert, is in fact, yours and under your control. Today, a bank will prove to you that they are who they say they are using a digital certificate which your web browser understands and checks against the URL you visit. If your web browser says the bank is bona fide then it displays a “padlock” in the address bar. 

But what about when the bank tries to identify you? Or any business online in PNG for that matter? How can they be sure it really is you before they grant access to your account? It could be someone who has stolen your password. Passwords get hacked all the time. Research shows that most people still reuse their passwords so they don’t have to remember a whole lot of them and people don’t pick good passwords. For almost the last two decades the most common password remains 123456.

Sadly, the vast majority of businesses in PNG still use paper-based documents to establish who you are, and then register you with a username and password to trust you online. Not only is a paper-based identity easy to forge, and especially in PNG where we don’t utilise physical credential security (you can often copy a card with an off-the-shelf laminated card printer and a few Google searches), but securing it with a username and password is outdated but gives people a false sense of security. 

We need better if we are going to transform our economy online and that’s where YuTru comes in. A YuTru digital identity is based on world-class cutting-edge technology that is both open and used widely by governments and financial institutions around the world. We are a PNG-first. The recent Department of Finance hack and ransomware could have been avoided if natural and digital persons (computer hardware and software) identify themselves using a YuTru ID. In fact, you can place a YuTru ID in a passport to make it an e-passport like in Australia or New Zealand or Singapore. That’s how secure it is. 

If we are to foster trust digitally in PNG, as well as be interoperable with other organisations in the Pacific, our APEC region, and the rest of the world, we need to rely on standards and openness for biometrics and digital security, rather than black-box identification systems which are rife in PNG. 

A YuTru ID gives PNG businesses the ability to secure their online services in a way that is simple for customers to use, highly secure, protects privacy, and attracts almost zero cost. Businesses that accept and rely on the YuTru trust mark are guaranteed of the validity and veracity of the identity claim made by a customer. No forgery possible because the digital ID relies on a person’s biometrics. No double identities possible either because all identities are checked for uniqueness before they are registered. Verified on the spot. Usable online. Trusted globally. 

Have we caught your attention? Still have questions? Learn more and contact us today to arrange a demonstration of YuTru.