Carnegie panel spotlights customization, private sector role in DPI development

A handful of governments have led the charge to define and popularize the concept of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), but the role of businesses is coming into focus as the ecosystem matures, according to a panel of experts.

India has taken a leadership role in the global adoption of digital ID, a spokesman for the country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) notes. The Modular Open-Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), is working with dozens of countries on digital ID rollouts, and has completed projects in five countries, including the Philippines, Monaco and Ethiopia, MEITy Joint Secretary Sanket Bhondhve said during the 9th Carnegie Global Technology Summit in New Delhi last week.

Aside from the Indian government, the event invited representatives from the World Bank, Mastercard and Microsoft to discuss public-private innovation in digital infrastructure on the example of India.

DPI projects will need to leverage the private sector while the government must remain flexible in introducing digital systems such as digital ID, payments and data exchange. It will need to be “citizen-centric, user friendly and accessible,” Bhondve added.

“You can’t put all the eggs in one basket,” says Bhondve. “We have to be very thorough, very flexible and customize what is needed. That is where our MEITy played an important role in bringing the private partnership into this.”

The country has been on a decade-long journey towards digitization, including introducing the biometric-based identity number Aadhaar, the instant money transfer system Universal Payment Interface (UPI) and digital document platform DigiLocker.

Bhondve noted that many private companies, including Google and payment app PhonePe, rely on their APIs to deliver services. Aardhaar, on the other hand, has dramatically decreased the cost of Know Your Customer (KYC) processes.

“The next step is a digital wallet” with functions beyond DigiLocker, says Bhondhve, adding that the country has been discussing its introduction with the European Union, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the United Nations.

“A digital wallet can’t be complete without the partnership of these important [payment] gateways,” he adds.

Private sector brings DPI innovation

One of these payment gateways is Mastercard which is also benefiting from the relationship. The company has seen great opportunity from DPI since the introduction of the Aadhaar, according to Heba Shams, the payment company’s vice president for Multilateral and International Affairs.

“Between 2016 and 2020, the number of credit cards in the ecosystem in India has doubled,” says Shams. “In that sense, we are beneficiaries of DPI as well.”

Similar sentiments have been expressed by the World Bank. Last month, the organization released a report on DPI, which highlights that the private sector is central to its success.

“Public services might be the first usage that we see of DPI, but for it to be sustainable, it really does need to leverage the private sector and the innovation on top of that,” says Vyjayanti Desai, the World Bank Group’s practice manager for Digital Development.

“We don’t often bring in the private sector as much as we should when designing some of the foundational DPI layers, particularly on things like the ones where government clearly has a role, like on ID and digital ID,” Desai continued. “But we see it in the usage.”

Desai mentioned the examples of India’s success in lowering customer onboarding costs for banks and shortening times for obtaining a SIM card, as well as Brazil’s fast payment system Pix, which has reached nearly 60 percent of the population and 8.5 million businesses. Thailand’s PromptPay and its federated ID have also been applied to a number of use cases, including payments, customer onboarding and other digital services.

“Across the board, across countries, the usage is there, and I think we’re going to only see more and more innovation,” says Desai.

Article Topics

digital identity  |  digital public infrastructure  |  Mastercard  |  Microsoft  |  MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform)  |  public-private partnerships  |  World Bank