In a physical shop everyone from the doorman to the executive at the counter will recognize you if you are a regular customer. In online stores this is much harder, and you have to provide a password to establish who you are. Secure access through password authentication is a necessity in online transactions. At the same time, password managers provide an essential service helping you to easily buy products from different online retailers. The same platform can also manage all your reward points making them easily accessible anywhere. But a physical retail outlet will take some time to process the same purchases and reward points. These problems need an efficient solution.
Problem office the Identity Gap
This difference between who you are online and who you are offline is difficult to manage for most people. It is known as the Identity Gap. In banking, it is easier for customers to make online transactions with few clicks using a unique username and password. But in a physical bank branch the same person has to provide bank cards and PINs.
The main problem is that the online identity of a legitimate user is completely isolated from their identity in the physical world and determined by different sets of information. With the digital transformation of our day-to-day lives in full swing, more and more people are looking for a viable solution to this problem in different sectors.
Digital ID as a solution
The clear solution is to create a singular unified identity for customers across online and offline platforms. Mobile and biometrics technologies are sufficiently advanced to allow this bridging of the Identity Gap. An important innovation in this field is taking a hybrid approach today to manage user identities across the real and virtual worlds. Using this method the user has full control over their sensitive personal data. Besides, trusted third parties can also maintain their own data about specific interactions with a particular end user through this technology.
The result is that a Digital ID for the customer always exists at their own disposal. Third parties can use their own records to verify this data whenever authentication is required, such as while opening a bank account. This avoids the messy process of sharing and verifying essential paper documents at all these checkpoints. Such technology is already in use in certain airports for passenger identification and its broader application will help narrow the Identity Gap.
The article was authored by Bahaa Abdul Hadi and has been published by the editorial board of the Identity Herald. For more information please visit www.identityherald.com.
