Digital ID: a trend of the next decade?
In order for the company to perform well, the management has to make sound decisions based on performance, indicators and research. Thus, over the last decades, corporate data has been the focus of large companies. Microsoft, Salesforce, Magento and others helped companies to streamline in-house processes and structure the data. However, at the point where companies transition into the “trillion-dollar club”, it is inevitable that the personal data of their customers will take its own domain. Support of such structures requires solid funding, hence requiring a stable monetisation strategy.
While the world is digitising and we have the opportunity to receive e-commerce services in a blink of a second, the digital personal identity space is still catching up due to strict regulations imposed (GDPR, PSD2), environment and economics.
2022
The world is changing. Prior to COVID, the QR code proposition was especially popular across Asian countries where businesses had to find a solution that would be the most effective under emerging market realities. Thus, a technology that allows customers to pay, receive money, finance and get government services at the cost of a $150 Android phone won the market.
Back in the 2000s when Apple ID was introduced, it served well as a tool to manage the customer base and interact with such. Going forward it is not a surprise that such a customer base has to be monetised. Analysts predicted that for example, Apple’s next revenue generation focus may shift not to launching another device, but to monetisation of the Apple ID.
Apple’s strategy. Shall we follow?
We’re all familiar with Apple Pay and Google Pay and how much easier (and more secure) they make online payments, but if Apple or Google really want to replace customer wallets, that means that they have to replace our loyalty cards, our railcards, health cards, gym cards and other. And in the real world, a customer might have only had twenty or thirty of those cards but in the virtual world, I have hundreds if not thousands. Replacing the payment cards was easy. Replacing the identity cards is hard. But in the long term, it’s much more valuable.
Apple’s recent acquisition
Open Banking credit reference agency Credit Kudos (UK) has recently been acquired by Apple which shows the interest of the tech giant in the discussed space. Credit Kudos simplifies credit checks for lenders by focusing on affordability and the current financing health of the borrower, rather than creditworthiness. Thus, including such technology into Apple processors, it could make Apple’s banking, sales and card systems a lot more robust.
Also, what didn’t stay unnoticed is Apple’s recent move into POS payments – where Apple’s software point-of-sale (soft-POS) solution allows merchants to accept contactless payments without the additional hardware – which means that it can now enter the POS financing too. One ID, every tool.
Thus, there are 4 possibilities:
- 1. The launch of Apple Cards in the UK?
- 2. New focus, customer scoring + other supporting product vertical integration
- 3. Global buy now, pay later story
- 4. Talent acquisition
Case Study: Diia App
Diia is a Ukrainian phone app used by citizens to store official documents. Launched in 2020, the Diia app allows Ukrainian citizens to use digital documents on their smartphones instead of physical ones for identification and sharing purposes. The Diia portal allows access to over 50 governmental services. Eventually, the government plans to make all kinds of state-person interactions available through Diia.
On February 6, 2020, the mobile app Diia was officially launched. During the presentation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 9 million Ukrainians now have access to their driver’s license and car registration documents on their phones. Followed by the experimental usage of digital ID cards and passports which would be issued to all Ukrainians via the Diia. In March 2021, the Ukrainian parliament adopted the bill equating digital identity documents with their physical analogues. Naturally, Ukraine became the first country in the world where digital identity documents are considered legally equivalent to ordinary paper ones.
What do we do at JO1N?
Serving as a single-window to multiple lenders, JO1N not only saves customers precious time typing in personal details when applying for loans. Instead of shoppers having to have separate accounts with lenders, the shoppers have a JO1N account through which they log in and get financing as JO1N is already integrated into the retailers’ online and offline checkout processes and is connected to multiple lenders. We enable customers to checkout smoothly by getting the best interest offers safely and conveniently.
The lack of a Digital ID infrastructure is an issue in a digitalising world and it needs to be tackled by governments. Since governments, credit agencies, lenders, and others have not fixed the problem it looks as if someone else is going to have to do it…JO1N?
Onwards and upwards! 🚀