UK productivity, fraud prevention goals motivate digital ID rethink: David Birch

Digital identity is going back on the agenda in the UK. British lawmakers are arguing that some ID is “inevitable” while other signs, including the upcoming identity verification services bill, are pointing toward a positive future.

The question for companies is how to accelerate the adoption of digital ID in the country and fight against fraud and deepfakes at the same time.

“People are beginning to realize that a lot of goals, even high-level goals of improved productivity, are just not achievable unless we have more digital infrastructure because we don’t have any form of ID card,” says David Birch, a digital payments consultant and advisor to digital identity verification service OneID.

Another impetus for introducing digital IDs is the “incredible amount” of fraud in the UK, Birch said at a recent webinar organized by OneID.

The bank-based DIATF-recertified scheme has been finding popularity among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) because they are susceptible to fraud, the company’s CEO Paula Sussex explained during the event. Bringing in larger corporations would boost adoption of digital ID and allow for even more fraud reduction.

“We do need some more infrastructural help from the other banks and also the government,” says Sussex.

The government is already doing part of its work by introducing the DIATF framework and certifications and getting the Digital Information and Smart Data Bill back on track, she adds: “[It] puts more of a sort of government assurance around the digital identity market.”

OneID is also in conversation with high-street banks, according to Sussex. NatWest has already adopted its identity verification for part of its business in Sweden, Finland and Norway.

Neighboring regions such as Benelux and Scandinavia are already demonstrating what digital ID can bring to the country. During the webinar, Itsme CEO Stephanie De Bruyne explained how the Belgian digital identity app has impacted the country’s ecosystem. Itsme is not only being used for logging into banking platforms but also for booking flights, renting cars and handling employment processes.

“More than 80 percent of the population uses it basically on an everyday basis and we’ve seen huge impacts, both on fraud, but also on digital inclusion,” says De Bruyne.

For Belgians, Itsme has become a trusted brand and a guarantee of sufficient security for transactions. Citizens do not pay for the solution, organizations pay a fee to Itsme per user per year instead of per transaction, motivating them to implement the infrastructure throughout their processes.

Itsme has achieved a balance of convenience and security that’s necessary for widespread adoption, according to De Bruyne. Behind the digital ID, there is a large infrastructure designed to prevent fraud such as phishing. This includes intercepting SMSs with fraudulent links with the help of telcos, warning citizens about fraudulent links and taking down websites set up by cyber fraudsters to collect user data.

The rise of deepfakes, however, poses a challenge for digital ID providers. Adversaries are moving fast and it’s getting difficult to keep up with them, according to Martin Sansone, lead standards architect at Pay.UK, an operator for the country’s interbank operation system.  The “good guys” are facing data limitations; defensive AI systems are relying on historical data, whereas the “bad guys” are using all the newest resources.

“The complexity of threats is going to get larger and larger,” says Sansone.

Article Topics

David Birch  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF)  |  fraud prevention  |  identity verification  |  Itsme  |  OneID  |  UK