What is identity acceptance?
Identity acceptance is the ability to utilize an existing verified digital identity to fulfill a user onboarding or user verification scenario. We announced our identity acceptance network last week with an initial set of incredible partners like CLEAR, Yoti, IDverse, Airside, Dentity and a dozen more. Now, instead of making every new user go through a document scan, relying parties that integrate Trinsic can accept 60+ million pre-verified users from any of our partners. As digital identity becomes more widespread, we believe identity acceptance will be used on every website where people need to trust each other.
Why does identity acceptance matter?
- Reusable ID is a great user experience (UX)
- User verification is becoming more common
- A lot of people have digital IDs
- It’s impractical to integrate 100+ different reusable ID networks
- User control and consent are built in
1. Reusable ID is a great UX
The ability to verify once, and then use that verification elsewhere to easily onboard is a great user experience. Having to complete a new government ID document scan every time you onboard to a new platform can take minutes, and cause up to 40% of people to abandon the flow. Just like Apple Pay enables you to remember card details, reusable ID introduces a seamless flow where your details are verified once, and then can be shared in just one-click in the future. Just look how fast Riley gets verified by sharing his reusable ID credential:
2. User verification is becoming more common
With the rise of AI, fraud on the internet has increased significantly. Many companies have started doing identity verification on all users. We’ve seen Uber, Airbnb, Tinder, LinkedIn and many others increase the number of verifications on their platforms to build more trust. Requiring everyone to scan a government ID document on every individual platform doesn’t make sense. Why not make that verification reusable so trust can easily be shared across platforms?
3. A lot of people have digital IDs
The idea of a reusable digital ID makes a lot of sense, so a lot of companies and governments are currently rolling out solutions. We’re tracking 118 (and counting) reusable ID networks around the world. The fragmentation in the market limits the benefits of reusable ID for businesses that need to verify users. We’ve calculated that over 2.06 billion people have verified digital identities across the networks we’re tracking. Both the number of reusable ID networks and the number of users with digital IDs will only continue to grow in the coming years.
4. It’s impractical to integrate 100+ digital ID networks
It’s already unreasonable for any individual relying party to integrate with 100+ digital ID types, and it will only grow more complex over time. But for most platforms, they likely have a large percentage of users who already possess digital IDs that could speed through their onboarding flows. Many reusable IDs require support for specific standards, custom business and legal agreements, and up front fees to get started. Trinsic takes on this burden so relying parties can seamlessly access tens of millions of pre-verified users with one integration.
5. User control and consent are built in
Lastly, identity acceptance brings user control and consent to the forefront of identity. We’ve heard from a countless vendors who want low friction for their users, but don’t want to rely on third party databases. Trinsic’s acceptance network can only access user data when an individual gives their explicit consent. Thus, vendors know they are respecting privacy, while not comprising on user experience.
How does identity acceptance work?
When starting the verification process, Trinsic will search for feasible reusable IDs for a user based on the phone number they input. If the user has been seen before in our network, we can remember their preferred verification method. For example, if a user visits a website and verifies with CLEAR, then next time they have to verify, CLEAR will be the first option for them as their remembered preference.
Since not everyone has a digital ID yet, identity acceptance does not replace identity verification, but it can augment it. Traditional document-based identity verification will continue to be an option for many years into the future, but instead of making it the only option, identity acceptance presents another way to verify users.
The way Trinsic is configured, if a user does not have a verified digital ID, when they complete their document-based identity verification, they are given the option to save their reusable ID for future use. Because of this, every day, the number of people with digital IDs continues to grow and Trinsic has the collective reach of all of our partners, meaning that we’ll soon reach a tipping point where more people have digital IDs than those who don’t.
Configuring identity acceptance as a relying party
Trinsic maintains a matrix of reusable IDs, attributes, levels of assurance and relevant geographies for all schemes that we support. Relying parties can choose which reusable IDs fulfill the requirements for their use case. Trinsic prioritizes verification methods that have high levels of assurance, many of which qualify as Identity Assurance Level (IAL) 2 and Level of Assurance (LOA) Substantial.
Getting started with identity acceptance
You can keep your existing identity verification process and vendor and supplement it with identity acceptance for any users with digital IDs. If you’re interested in exploring what reusable IDs would be most relevant to your user base, contact our team and we can provide a free assessment of the most widely adopted IDs in your key geographies.
