Digital ID Takes Center Stage Amid Facebook Woes

Digital ID and authentication are always vital topics for payments and commerce — but now, given recent developments, including in social media, they have taken on new importance.

Facebook, for instance, is working to maintain, or even win back, the trust of consumers who were shaken by the Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal, or those who are increasingly wary of sharing too much information online with a massive corporation. Pew Research recently reported that 42 percent of Facebook users have taken a break from the platform during the past year, while 54 percent of those 18 and older have adjusted their privacy settings during that timeframe.

In an interview with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, Sunil Madhu, founder of identity verification and fraud prevention services provider Socure, talks about some of the deeper digital ID issues that dominate 2018 and promise to play significant roles in the future.

So much of digital identity relates to the question of security. As Madhu put it: “It’s always an interesting type of seesaw fight between security and ease of use.”

So, what does the future hold, given the current reality of individual digital ID? On this question, Madhu and Webster expressed disagreement.

In a related recent story, Trulioo’s general manager, Zac Cohen, spoke with Webster about the new eIDAS regulations that are set to officially go online in the EU in September.

For any modern economy to efficiently function, it first and foremost needs to feature effective identity systems, Cohen noted. He said that identity is a cornerstone service, because it enables all involved parties to trust in the transaction itself. The problem in the EU today — in the pre-eIDAS world — is that currently, different member states have different digital identification schemes, and there’s very little standardization or cross-border cohesion.

Digital ID and authentication issues promise to gain even more currency as social media habits shift in the coming years.