Know your geography for successful digital ID adoption: Trinsic

A big year for digital identity issuance, adoption and regulation has widened the opportunities for businesses around the world to make use of the technology to improve interactions with customers and others, according to an online presentation from Trinsic. The trick is knowing where those opportunities have already arrived, and where they are imminent.

CEO Riley Hughes hosted a webinar exploring the “Digital ID Opportunity Zones in 2025” ebook, which will be shared with live online attendees as part of the webinar follow-up. The findings are based on an analysis of identity schemes from around the world, but present a selection, rather than a comprehensive breakdown of national digital ID ecosystems.

“There’s a lot of hype in digital ID,” Hughes says, but the market opportunities are the areas outside of that attention.

The opportunities several years out may also be easier to identify than those of the moment.

Trinsic chose five geographies to consider, splitting them between those the company would highly recommend adopting digital ID in, those businesses should consider adopting digital ID in, and those in which it would caution against adoption.

The recommendations are based on digital ID adoption rate, assurance level, private sector usability, user experience and regulatory factors. The hypothetical use case is one in which the digital identity can replace an upload of a physical ID (likely along with a selfie biometrics comparison).

The Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Brazil, India  and the Philippines are identified as “Green Zones” by Trinsic. The U.S., Australia, Indonesia, Italy, Sweden and Norway get yellow flags, and Germany, Spain, Canada, the UAE and Singapore get red cards for their market opportunities.

The Netherlands is a good example of a geography ripe for digital ID adoption because its BankID is widely adopted among its 18.9 million people, and the iDIN service works provides a Substantial Level of Assurance under eIDAS for private sector services. Brazil uses biometric authentication to a centralized government database, and “has a different set of trade-offs” than the European countries painted green, Hughes says.

He ran through the characteristics and trade-offs for each country identified in the report.

The U.S. is a yellow zone in part because digital ID adoption, including all of the mobile driver’s licenses issued so far, is between 30 and 40 percent, at close to 100 million people out 340 million.

Notably, an ABI Research report published this month forecasts U.S. mDL adoption will grow from 21.7 million this year to 143 million people across 40 states by 2030.

An integration barrier may remain, however, as not all American digital IDs are aligned to the same standard.

Regulatory barriers, particularly for international relying parties, keep Sweden and Norway in the middle ground. For companies that have a bank account in these countries, one of those barriers falls away, but the same digital ID must be used for authentication as was used for identity verification, Hughes points out.

Germany is in the red zone despite leadership in many areas around eIDAS and EU Digital ID Wallets because the adoption rate is only 22 percent, and those who have adopted digital IDs tend not to use them often. The situation in Canada is similar.

The descriptions of various national approaches show the range of ways digital ID can work effectively, whether issued by the government or the private sector. They also illustrate the ways in which a digital ID can be effective for use within a country, particularly for certain uses like payments or government services, without allowing much room for global businesses to make use of them.

The opportunities for digital ID to replace ID document and biometric checks are very real, and have advanced significantly over the past year, Hughes concludes. They are not the same everywhere, however, making it important for businesses adopting digital identity to be clear on where and how they will do so.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  digital wallets  |  mDL (mobile driver's license)  |  Trinsic