The U.S. Payments Forum has published a new whitepaper on the “The Role of Mobile IDs in Payments.”
The study gives an insight into the increasing number of emerging, government-issued digital identity services and how they can potentially increase security and convenience for online and in-person transactions between businesses and people
It comes as governments globally work to create digital identities – electronic representations of government-issued IDs such as passports, drivers’ licenses and identification cards – on now ubiquitous mobile devices.
Known as “mobile IDs” or “mIDs,” digital identities offer many benefits. First, mIDs feature strong cryptographic authentication, making it much more difficult to counterfeit IDs. They can also be machine verified, which lessens reliance on manual checks. Secondly, mIDs have the ability to identify identity holders remotely, an increasingly essential capability in today’s diitaly interconnected world. Third, the digital nature of mIDs allows much more frequent updates.
For example, when a person moves, that change of address could be updated near real-time on the mID, increasing its security value and extending its useful life. They can also provide individuals with more control over which identity attributes to share and better privacy protections.
“Digital identities are a transformative technology that will elevate government-issued credentials to a level of security and convenience commensurate with today’s interconnected world,” said Devon Rohrer, managing director of the U.S. Payments Forum.
“Our goal with this paper is to educate stakeholders about the progress being made with mIDs and help stimulate their widespread use in the near term in the payments ecosystem,” he added.
In particular the report gives key insights into the current state of mIDs and mobile driver’s licenses and the future outlook, mID standards and guidelines for acceptance, how mIDs can be used in today’s payments ecosystem, data privacy considerations for payments and the future of mID and POS integration.
