There’s been plenty of conversation about digital ID.
Digital wallets. Digital credentials. New ways for people to prove who they are or something about themselves.
All of that matters. But there’s another, very practical question we need to answer:
Where will people actually use it?
Because giving someone a digital ID is only useful if the businesses and services, they interact with can accept it.
And that's where things start to get interesting.
Start with the problem, not the technology
Most people probably don't wake up thinking they need a digital ID.
They have much more everyday problems.
They need to prove they're old enough to buy something. They may need to confirm who they are when signing up for a service. A business may need some information about a customer, but not necessarily everything that’s contained on a physical identity document.
The opportunity for digital ID is to make some of those everyday interactions simpler.
Take buying an age-restricted product.
Today, if someone needs to prove their age, they're generally asked to show an identity document containing far more information than the business actually needs.
The important question in that interaction isn't necessarily What's your name? What's your address? What's your date of birth?
It's simply:
Are you old enough?
That's the kind of problem digital ID has the potential to solve differently.
For our Age Assurance work, a person is able to prove they are 18 or over without needing to share all the information contained on a physical identity document. As part of the check, a portrait can be presented for the merchant to view, helping them confirm that the credential belongs to the person in front of them. For merchants, that provides an additional level of confidence in the interaction, particularly when they are ultimately responsible for making sure an age-restricted sale is appropriate. The portrait is used for that verification and then deleted.
But the customer is only one side of the equation
The experience also has to work for the business that needs to check or verify a presented digital ID
For a retailer, seeing a successful check appear on a terminal is useful. But there is a bigger operational question:
What happens around that check?
That's something we've been thinking a lot about at Cuscal Paymark.
Our Age Assurance capability is being designed to connect the age check with the payment, provide confirmation on the receipt, retain a record of the verification and support merchant reporting.
That's important because we don't think merchant verification of digital ID should be viewed simply as another function on a terminal.
It needs to work as part of the wider experience for the customer and the merchant.
From accepting payments to accepting ID
This is where Cuscal Paymark has a natural role to play.
For decades, we've helped connect businesses, banks and consumers so payments can happen.
Now we're looking at a similar challenge through a different lens: how do we help people use a digital ID with the businesses that need to check or accept them?
Our focus is on the acceptance side of the digital ID ecosystem, working alongside credential issuers, wallet providers, government, technology partners and businesses. That's also how we've framed our new digital ID proposition.
We're starting with age assurance because it's a real problem that's easy to understand.
But it's the starting point, not the destination.
Over time, we see opportunities for digital ID to support other interactions, including customer enrolment and loyalty, although these remain future opportunities rather than current Age Assurance capability.
And we want acceptance to extend beyond a single terminal environment. Our current strategy identifies Skyzer for the initial terminal deployment, with a broader ambition for an acceptance network spanning more environments over time.
The real test for digital ID
As the digital ID ecosystem develops, I think one of the measures of its success will be surprisingly simple.
Not how sophisticated the technology is.
Not how many new terms we can introduce.
But whether it solves real problems for real people and businesses.
Can someone prove what they need to prove without unnecessary complexity?
Can a business confidently accept it?
Can it fit naturally into an interaction people are already having?
And can we make all the technology sitting behind that experience largely invisible?
That's the opportunity we're focused on.
Because having a digital ID is one thing. Having somewhere useful to use it is what will make it matter.