EFTPOS’ DIGITAL IDENTITY SOLUTION CONNECTID IS NOW LIVE

Australian News

25.06.21; Australian Fintech

The eftpos Group today announced that its new digital identity solution business, connectID, is now live and running as a standalone FinTech and fully owned eftpos subsidiary.

eftpos began its new digital identity solution mid last year, aiming to make it easier for Australians to share, store and receive personal identity information online.

As part of the move, eftpos also revealed it was working with SecureKey to develop the technology. SecureKey is a leading global identity and authentication company that has a proven track record in comparable markets such as Canada.

eftpos CEO Stephen Benton said with connectID going live, the focus was now on expanding the range of partner organisations and applications while harnessing synergies and capabilities across the eftpos Group of businesses.

“For the connectID business to keep advancing and growing, it needs to keep running like a nimble FinTech at an operational level to pursue its goal of creating a national identity infrastructure for all Australians,” Mr Benton said.

“connectID is collaboratively working with governments, businesses, online merchants, banks and other identity providers with a view to building identity into our national payments infrastructure, as well as other commercial applications for all Australians and Australian businesses.”

eftpos’ connectID is a ‘broker’ between identity providers, organisations that securely hold identity data on behalf of their customers, and merchants or government departments that need to verify who they are dealing with or receive identity information that they can trust. eftpos is uniquely placed to offer this service, particularly for interactions requiring a payment.

Rob Allen, eftpos Entrepreneur in Residence, has spearheaded the connectID initiative since the beginning said we are bringing that same trusted capability that eftpos has in payments into identity, by building and subsequently operating national digital identity infrastructure.

“In Australia there is a real need to facilitate identity verification methods to help reduce the instances of fraud and identity theft, and improve ‘digital trust’ between customers and vendors. We aim to seamlessly combine identity and payments transactions within the same flow and create even better customer experiences,” Mr Allen said.

Greg Wolfond, Founder and CEO of SecureKey, said he was thrilled its technology was being integrated by eftpos to power its connectID service in Australia.

“As digital identity standards and ecosystems rapidly develop and evolve, ensuring the security of users’ information while enabling the convenience of this technology remains a top priority. eftpos in Australia and the industry in Canada, have both demonstrated a particularly strong appetite for its widespread use as the two economies emerge from the global pandemic,” Mr Wolfond said.

While connectID securely facilitates the identity verification or data exchange, it does not store the identity data. Identity service providers store consumer identities and take responsibility for providing this secure information only under the consent of the identity owner.

connectID has applied to become the first non-government accredited operator of a digital identity exchange in Australia. As interoperability is key to the connectID solution, it is designed to work within the Federal Government’s Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF) and the financial industry’s TrustID framework, as well as emerging international standards in distributed digital identity credentials.