So in China for $65 you can buy a stolen ID card of someone who looks a bit like you and you're home and dry. In a way, that's worse than having no ID system at all, because it means that once you are inside the wire (ie, once you've flashed your stolen ID card at someone and they have accepted that it's you) then your rights and privileges are no longer questioned!
Look. Identity infrastructure should be based on the premise that anyone's identity might be stolen but that it cannot be used by anyone other than the rightful owner. That means an infrastructure with strong authentication. I think I might host a discussion table on this topic at the first ever Bay Area Tomorrow's Transactions Unconference in Palo Alto on Friday 4th October. Consult Hyperion are organising this with our friends at BayPay and with support from the wonderful people at Discover.
For those of you unfamiliar with our Unconference concept, the event will build on the success of the previous London, New York and Toronto Unconferences, success that is down to the expertise and enthusiasm of the participants but also the event format itself. Instead of of a succession of pre-determined Powerpoint presentations, the events mix stimulating talk from thought-leaders with global perspectives and discussion sessions which bring together the delegates, experts and selected industry observers to cover topics chosen by the delegates themselves on the day. The goal of the day will be to help professionals in the finance, payments and related industries to explore the future of the retail electronic transactions space and go back to their companies with new ideas, new strategic input and new friends.
Who knows what the delegates will choose to discuss and debate in Palo Alto next week, but I expect the topics to be covered to include the future of online identity, the mobile "wallet wars", migration to chip cards in the US, alternative and parallel currencies, "near banking" and much more. (At the London event this year the topics discussed ranged from bank APIs to writing a movie about payments, and at the Toronto events popular topics included identity as a banking service, the end of cash and big vs. small data in business models.)
The invited thought pieces that will stimulate the discussion in Palo Alto will be:
1. David Wolman, contributing editor at Wired magazine and author of "The End of Money" (all delegates will receive a copy of David's book).
2. Nate Wehunt Sr., Head of Digital Channels at City National Bank.
3. Sam Lessin, the Head of the Identity Product Group at Facebook.
4. Me, one of Wired magazine's global top 15 favourite sources of finance and business news, and Europe's most influential commentator on the emerging payments scene.
Following the keynote, during the Q&A sessions, the delegates will (in best open-space style, as described at http://www.unconference.net/) note down the topics that they would like to discuss and these will be organised into sets of parallel sessions (one before lunch and two after). Delegates are then free to join in any, all or none of the discussions. The points raised in the discussions will be captured and reported. If you are responsible for strategic directions around payments, banking and finance then come along and get new ideas, new perspectives and new insights to help you to develop robust strategies to make the most of the incredible technology, business and social changes underway.
There will be a range of delegates from different backgrounds at the fall events and we hope the cross-fertilisation of ideas will be something special. As for the other events, the day will be limited to 100 delegates so that everyone gets a chance to participate in discussion, debate and learning. I hope you decide to come along. It's $50 for BayPay members and $100 for non-members, so you'd be mad not to get yourself a ticket right here, right now. See you next Friday.