Inverid talks successes, looks to the future

Inverid has marked its 10-year anniversary by highlighting some of its successes in public sector identity programmes and schemes.

The company specialises in Near Field Communication (NFC) technology and advocates for an NFC-first approach to identity verification.

“In terms of identity verification, of being able to prove the authenticity of documents, it’s the best that we have out there. From a global perspective, it has international standards backing it up,” said Jim Slevin, regional director at Inverid.

Slevin was speaking at the recent Think Digital Identity for Government event in London (pictured). There he recounted some of Inverid’s work in the public sector, including the Home Office-run Generic Identity and Document Verification (GIDV) service, which allows digitisation of UK immigration application processes applying to non-UK citizens and affiliates.

The service involves the use of a mobile app which scans the chip in a person’s passport. The applicant then takes a ‘selfie’ or scan of their face which is matched against their image in the passport chip. A liveness test ensures that the applicant is a real, live person and matches the verified identity document. This information is sent securely to the Home Office which verifies the identity of the passport holder and completes the application process.

Working with partner, Entrust, Inverid’s ReadID software reads and securely verifies the travel document NFC chip on a smartphone.

The solution that underpins the GIDV service was previously deployed for the EU Settlement Scheme, on which Inverid also worked. This was also the first project globally that was allowed by Apple to use NFC on their devices for anything other than payments. It has since been deployed to support the resettlement of Hong Kong-based British passport holders, for some overseas student categories, and for Ukrainian refugees applying for a Ukraine Family Scheme visa.

It is now to be extended, starting this month for the UK Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme that could apply to 30 million travellers per year.

Future initiatives

Slevin said that Covid greatly accelerated the market requirement for remote verifications.

“Scalability became much more interesting. For us as a software as a service provider, being able to scale quickly and to supply the market was really critical. And certainly, for the EU Settlement Scheme, a critical deciding factor was ‘how fast can you get up to high volumes?’ We’re talking over seven million transactions in a relatively short period of time.”

Looking to the future, Slevin outlined several changes to the identity landscape. These include continuing changes to eIDAS 2.0. the European Identity Assurance, the European Cybersecurity Skills Framework (ECSF) – ENISA, and the arrival of mobile driver licences.

Under the eIDAS 2.0, there’s currently work on large scale pilots of four digital wallets covering public services, payments, education and travel. “We’re indirectly involved in all four of those in terms of our technology being used within those particular pieces,” said Slevin.

“There’s an awful lot going on in terms of the future initiatives. In terms of Read ID being used in the EU wallet, there’s a general issue of the EU framework guidance in terms of how do you take that initial documentation, verify the identity of the individual and place that within an EU wallet, which will become a legal requirement for states to issue to their citizens sometime soon.”