It is a crisis

[Dave Birch] I referred in a recent post to a comment by Adam Banks, the Chief Technology Officer for Visa Europe, that

There really is, as Adam Shaw, the Visa Europe CTO says, a crisis in identity.

[From CSFI Identity and Financial Services]

Given that I'd mentioned this, I thought I'd explain further. Last year, Adam wrote a report on "The Future of Technology and Payments" [PDF, 200Kb] intended as, as he put it, to be a conversation opener to highlight seven technology-related trends that he thinks will have a major impact on the payments business in the medium term (i.e., over the next three to five years). The first six are (my labels and paraphrasing):

1. The continuing inexorable pressure of Moore's Law.
2. The device-formerly-known-as-the-mobile-phone.
3. The ubiquity of networks.
4. The rise of the virtual world.
5. The practical panopticon (and a point about the value of payments data).
6. The global village shop.
7. The crisis of identity.
   

Adam puts these points over clearly and I'm sure that no-one could disagree with his summary of the opportunities and implications (although, to be honest, I did slightly because I used a five-way rather than seven-way categorisation at the Visa Europe Bank Card Business School last year!). But it's is last, and to my mind most powerful, point that I want to focus on. And here I'm using his label and description.

• Crisis of identity. Adam says that traditional identity management models are becoming increasingly unsustainable and there is an opportunity for a collective industry solution and the need for a trusted partner.

To my mind, one of the key reasons why the identity management paradigm needs resetting is that we are taking mundane conceptions of identity and translating them into what Adam calls the "parallel" virtual world. But the virtual world isn't parallel to the mundane: it's different, and notions of identity in that space are not reflections or projections of mundane identity but more powerful, more nuanced and more complex. Adam's conclusions, though, are spot on: if some sort of robust personal identity management (PIM) solution were to be adopted then the implications for the payment industry would be "profound" (not my words: Visa Europe's).

This is why the technologies associated with identity and authentication are so critical, why their exploitation will be disruptive. Visa Europe and its members have to disrupt themselves because of this, and I am convinced that if they don't do it them someone else will. If you've cracked identity and have established a value network around identity management, then payments become, frankly, easy. Identity, though I hate to chant the mantra, is the new money.

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name;
Robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.
William Shakespeare, Othello (Act 3, Scene 3).

[posted with ecto]

Digital

Comments

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