Services Australia to run Trust Exchange pilot with largest Australian bank

A pilot with Commonwealth Bank will test the Australian government’s digital identity exchange scheme, Trust Exchange (TEx), using digital medical credentials housed in the myGov app.

A report from InnovationAus.com quotes outgoing Services Minister Bill Shorten, who says “Services Australia has been working with the Commonwealth Bank on a concept that would look to use the Medicare card in your myGov app digital wallet to contribute to the identity verification process.”

The pilot at a Canberra branch will use QR codes for sharing only necessary government-verified information. The idea is that TEx will eventually allow Australians to perform identity verification and share digital credentials, without handing over physical ID documents or sharing data not relevant to the transaction, in a wide variety of use cases.

TEx came with a AU$11.4 (US$7.3) million investment for proof of concept. Shorten first alluded to the Commonwealth Bank in December, in a media release announcing the first identity verification prototype of TEx, at a General Practice medical clinic in Brisbane, Queensland.

Both TEx and Australia’s myGov app have faced questions about its vulnerability to fraud, with myGov having posted billions in losses to identity scams. Around 5.6 million people now use the app to sign in to myGov, which recently integrated biometric passkey security.

Shorten has been a major advocate for TEx, which rolls out at roughly the same time as an Australian national digital identity system. But the minister is leaving politics to take up a role as  vice-chancellor at the University of Canberra, and will vacate his seat this coming Monday, nine days earlier than expected.

Article Topics

Australia  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  digital wallets  |  identity verification  |  myGov (Australia)  |  patient identification  |  Trust Exchange (TEx)