eftpos has entered the emerging digital identity market, announcing that a business it owns called connectID has been accredited to operate a digital identity exchange.
Since May, Australia Post, the Australian Taxation Office and a private operator, OCR Labs, have been accredited as digital identity providers under an arrangement called the Trusted Digital Identity Framework.
Building on its payment network capabilities, eftpos will link these providers with merchants, which will then be able to accept digital identities for transactions.
The only other accredited identity exchange is Services Australia.
Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business, Stuart Robert, is in charge of the development of the digital identity system, which is part of the government’s digital economy plan.
One curious feature of the development so far is that accreditation has started before any digital identity legislation has been passed.
The government started consulting on legislation last year but has not yet produced a bill. Until it does, no one has a firm idea about the privacy protections and other safeguards the system will have, the extent of personal information that a digital identity may include, the system’s governance and oversight, liabilities or fee arrangements.
As it operates now, the Trusted Digital Identity Framework requires standards that align with the Australian Privacy Principles and the Privacy Code, the Australian Government Protective Security Policy Framework and the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Essential Eight Cyber Security Mitigations.
The managing director of eftpos Digital Identity, Andrew Black, said in a statement that connectID is operating in a trial stage.
He said some of the use cases his team is working on with government bodies include age verification for online liquor sales and police checks and licence validations for operators of heavy machinery on mining sites.
He said potential uses include e-commerce onboarding, responsible gaming, recruitment checks, and identity checks for anti-money laundering.