United Kingdom / Australia
Mastercard has received certification under the UK’s Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF) as an identity provider. Mastercard can now offer ‘ID’, its digital identity service, to organisations in the UK.
Elsewhere, Mastercard has partnered with a New South Wales Government executive agency (NSW) and online liquor vendor Tipple in Australia to offer a smooth age verification process for customers shopping online.
Mastercard has been scaling ID globally since 2019, announcing several pilots and global partnerships with Samsung and Microsoft. Since 2021, Mastercard has also partnered with Optus, one of the largest telecoms companies in Australia, to provide ID to more than 600,000 of its customers.
Global
Ping Identity has announced early access to PingOne Neo, a multi-standards decentralized identity management solution. The company says Neo improves data security, privacy, and control for individuals while reducing resource and compliance burdens for enterprises.
“Organizations can now verify without complex, expensive back-end integrations that increase each organization’s attack surface. Neo reduces the possibility of identity theft for individuals and improves security for organisations by instantly establishing trust with individuals based on their digital credentials,” it says.
With Neo, a person requests a verifiable credential from an organisation that is cryptographically signed and verifiable. The verifiable credential is then added to the person’s digital wallet and can be shared with the business that requires it. The individual is in control of what information gets shared.
United Kingdom
NatWest Group and OneID have partnered to launch a new digital ID service for businesses.
The collaboration between the British banking and insurance company and the identity service provider has enabled NatWest Group to make its new Customer Attribute Sharing service available as an embedded solution.
The new Customer Attribute Sharing service streamlines signing up for new services, buying goods online and other online experiences by enabling customers to allow businesses to access bank-held data, according to the release.
It also verifies customers’ details when they are renting a car or accessing other services that have age restrictions, the release said.
Europe
The proposal for a European Union-wide digital wallet passed a plenary vote, moving forward with the initiative aimed at enabling and protecting the digital identity of EU citizens and providing them with digital access to key public services across EU borders.
The European Parliament has voted in favour of a negotiating mandate for talks with the EU member states on the revision of the new European Identity (eID) directive. The introduction of the European Union-wide digital wallet framework will move to interinstitutional negotiations after passing its plenary vote 418 votes to 103, with 24 abstentions, an EU announcement confirmed.
Finland
The National Police Board of Finland has announced the go live of the new Finnish electronic travel and identity documents. Thales was awarded the global contract for passports, eID cards, and eResident Permits for a second time.
The contract covers the design, production and personalisation of Finnish passports, identity cards, residence cards and resident permit cards, as well as the secure delivery of the pre-verified documents. In addition, the agreement includes many services to support the client, such as temporary passport personalisation, warehousing, invoicing, reporting and service monitoring.
Building on the existing set of physical security attributes, the documents include new anti-forgery features, along with a new design. The security features in the polycarbonate datapage and eID card have been completely redesigned and updated to be tamperproof, with the new translucent polycarbonate structure. Furthermore, the larger size of photo in the ID cards and a colour picture in the passport paper page help verification. A new feature in both the passports and the ID cards is the 2D bar code for easier machine recognition and reading.
Canada / Holland
French identity tech company IDEMIA has become a technology partner of a Dutch Consortium deploying a Digital Travel Credential (DTC) Pilot, co-founded by the European Commission.
The European DTC Pilot is between Canada and the Netherlands and is deployed by a Dutch Consortium that consists of the Ministry of Justice & Security, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Defense/Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and marks the world’s first transatlantic DTC Pilot.
IDEMIA is set to be the technology provider for the European Union (EU) DTC-1 Pilot, a programme launched by the European Commission (EC) to test the DTC on KLM flights between the two regions for a period of three months.
Meanwhile, private equity group Advent has launched the sale of IDEMIA, in a deal expected to be worth several billion euros. French publication Les Echos reported that the sale was launched last week and first offers were expected by April 18.
Europe / New Zealand
Incode is expanding the reach of its biometrics and identity verification technologies geographically.
Advanced Living Technologies (ALTec) and sister company at-visions will use Incode’s omnichannel identity verification and biometric authentication for age verification, KYC compliance and reusable identity within the gaming and hospitality sectors. Incode’s liveness detection, automation and watchlist features made it stand out to ALTec, according to the announcement.
ALTec provides an identity product called SONIO to the gaming industry, while at-vision supplies IP streaming technologies to the hospitality industry.
The company has also formed a reseller agreement with Infolog to deliver its technology in New Zealand. The deal, reported by New Zealand Reseller News, will start by targeting the public sector, with a plan to begin selling to all customers in the months ahead.
Nigeria
The federal Ministry of Finance of Nigeria has said talks are underway with NEC to deploy facial recognition technology at some of the country’s airports, starting with Abuja and Lagos.
At the end of talks which the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning Clem Agba had with the Turkish Ambassador to Nigeria Matsunaga Kazuyoshi and officials of NEC recently, the government official said deploying facial recognition in Nigeria’s airports will curb insecurity and other illegal activities, Punch reports.
The project is expected to be financed with grants secured through the planned cooperation agreement. NEC will first deploy the system at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos and the Nnamdi Azikiwe Internal Airport in Abuja for a trial, before eventually expanding it to airports in the cities of Enugu, Kano and Port Harcourt.
Nepal
Dozens of Nepalese citizens have questioned the usefulness of the national digital ID card launched by the government in 2018. According to a recent article by the Kathmandu Post, via Biometric Update, the digital ID was created to replace several IDs and facilitate access to government services.
However, the document has not yet replaced the citizenship certificate, a document required for government jobs and other services. It is not accepted by the Department of Transport Management or Public Service Commission, either.
The digital ID is only required when applying for a passport or taking a medical entrance exam.
The Department of National ID and Civil Registration confirmed it had distributed 133,000 cards but more than 1.2 million cards have been printed. Biometrics of 11.4 million people across the country have also been collected.
Philippines
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has announced it has issued more than 60 million PhilIDs and ePhilIDs, a new ‘milestone’ in its implementation of PhilSys, the country’s ID system.
Verification can be done by scanning the QR code of the PhilID or ePhilID through the identity authentication tool, PhilSys Check.
It come weeks after PSA confirmed it had issued over 50 million physical and digital cards.
The country’s national police (PNP) recently launched a digitised booking system for arrested individuals that requires the collection of their biometrics.
