Paying for verifiable credentials using Stripe, and what if Digital ID was as easy as tap-and-go?

Hi everyone, thanks for coming back to Customer Futures. Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around digital wallets, Personal AI and digital customer relationships.

If you haven’t yet signed up, why not Subscribe Now.

Welcome back to another weekly firehose of Empowerment Tech goodness.

I was reminded this week of two important ET principles that I wanted to share.

First is the Ronald Regan quote: “If you are explaining, you’re losing”. Captured in a recent post by the excellent Jeffrey Schwartz.

In my view, too many people working in digital ID, Personal AI and Empowerment Tech are explaining. Trying to persuade. Trying to describe.

But we all know that the best customer experiences are just that. Experiences. Moments. They should ‘just work’ (and the best ones are invisible).

And yet so many of us are explaining how things work. From OIDC4SSI to ZKPs. From data portability to privacy-by-design.

Digital ID and ET teams need to go back again and watch the famous Steve Jobs video clip where he says “You can’t start with the technology. You have to start with the user experience and work backwards from there”.

That’s principle number one. The second was hammered home to me in a post by the unparalleled Richard Pope. Writer, advisor and visionary on all things digital government. He wrote this week:

“People don't want personalised services, they need services to work harder for them. In the same way people don't want personalised healthcare, they want to get better.”

It’s a reminder of why Empowerment Tech will exist. Not to improve ‘personalisation’ or ‘relevance’ or ‘engagement’. But to improve customer outcomes. Citizen outcomes. Personal outcomes.

Both of these principles are about doing things FOR the customer. And yet both are largely being missed by businesses today.

Yet both, if we get them right, are about the future of being a digital customer. So welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.

In this week’s edition:

• You can now pay for verifiable credentials using Stripe
• What if Digital ID was as easy as tap-and-go?
• Is Australia’s open banking programme failing because it’s focused on compliance?
• Just wait until Apple Intelligence works with Open Finance
• Apple delays the launch of AI in Europe due to data portability questions
• Japanese banks collaborate on DID
• People have much more to do with data than businesses - so why don’t we have our own data systems?
• Customer digital twins are easy to create - but what will we use them for?
• … plus other links about the future of digital customers you don’t want to miss

Let’s Go.

You can now pay for verifiable credentials using Stripe

It’s one of the most common questions - and sometimes arguments against - digital identity wallets.

“Cool tech,” people say, “but what about the commercial model?”

Because when you introduce a digital wallet into an identity flow, we need to ask questions like:

• Who will pay for ID credentials?
• Why will ‘data issuers’ bother, what’s in it for them?
• Who will fund the digital wallet in the first place?

Startup Cheqd has been working on these questions for a few years now. And they just hit a public milestone, demonstrating how to move - and pay for - credentials using existing payment rails. Using platforms like Stripe.

“Credential Payments?is available to use through a set of easily consumable APIs within our Credential Service SaaS… It provides a clear commercial model for issuers to exchange, monetise, and charge for the credentials, maintaining self-sovereign data control… Fiat payment helps streamline the process, offering a user-friendly experience to all parties involved.”

Worth watching the Cheqd video to show the real-time verification of a credential, and payment for it using Stripe.

Developing these kinds of features - about the commercial model for digital wallets - will be central to driving the adoption of decentralised ID.

And of course, for Empowerment Tech more broadly.

WATCH

What if Digital ID was as easy as tap-and-go?

FinTech startup Kevin has just released a video showing how you can now use your web3 wallet to make a payment at a regular point of sale (PoS) machine.

Just like you’d tap a payment card in a shop, restaurant or bar.

Kevin is fascinating. It’s a new kind of payment scheme operator, now accepting multiple payment options including Bitcoin.

Why should you care? Well, because the customer doesn’t.

Most payment terminals work regardless of which card you use. Which currency you use. They take the pain away from the customer by working across payment rails and schemes.

Now flip that over to digital ID.

What happens when that same payment terminal can accept your digital ID? And more, what if it could accept multiple types of digital ID, from multiple schemes?

A number of ‘identity acceptance networks’ are already being set up to do exactly that, including with the payment networks.

Got a digital ID? Then you should be able to ‘tap and go’ at the PoS terminal. Bolt-on the payment data to the same transaction? Well, we’re off to the races.

Yes, it’s going to take time, just like the adoption of credit cards. But ID+payments is coming to a point of sale terminal near you, and sooner than you think.

KEVIN PAYMENT VIDEO

Is Australia’s open banking programme failing because it has focused on compliance?

Australia’s banks have announced that after four years, fewer than 1% of their customers are using new open banking rails for data sharing.

And over 50% of those customer data-sharing agreements have since either been stopped, or allowed to lapse.

Does 1% mean it’s a failure? Or just that they don’t yet have the right use cases? And was this predictable?

I’ve written before that most ‘data portability’ programmes are really about compliance. And it’s why they either fail, or take years to bear fruit. Instead, we must follow the money. To value. And to customer empowerment.

Check out my previous post (link below) for a deeper dive on how to get data portability moving.

OZ OPEN BANKING, DATA PORTABILITY FOR EMPOWERMENT

Just wait until Apple Intelligence works with Open Finance

On one hand, we can point to Open Banking as a slow, grinding compliance effort by different countries (Exhibit A: Australia, above). On the other, we can all see the coming explosion of customer innovation, where Personal AI meets finance.

They say you should never let an algorithm spend your money. But what if you could trust a digital assistant to manage your money? When it was trained on all your transactions, spending, habits and personal rules?

Simon Taylor on Apple and AI again:

“Imagine getting insights and recommendations for every card, account, or loyalty card in your Wallet. Apple could help you select the card that maximizes rewards at checkout, set up a savings habit, and even ensure you're maximizing your tax advantages with brokerage and savings.

“With Siri, you could "talk to your money" and get coaching on improving. The ability to handle pictures and documents means Apple could make sense of your taxes in the context of your transactions. Of course, Apple could do many of these things quickly. But it won't be ready for the market until it's very sure the UX and privacy are so robust.”

READ

Apple delays the launch of AI in Europe due to data portability questions

While we’re talking about Apple Intelligence, a gentle reminder that it’s not going to be easy to roll out bleeding edge tech (AI) in new geographies (EU) surrounded by new customer data regulations (like the Digital Markets Act).

Apple now says it won’t be rolling out the latest Apple Intelligence features in Europe this year due to ‘regulatory uncertainties’ with the DMA. They claim that the latest data portability requirements could put user security and privacy at risk.

It raises an interesting question. Is it possible for a business to run a Personal AI on your device, and then to meet data portability rules, allow competitor platforms to access all the personal data within it?

It’s going to be interesting to see how Apple plays this one. Especially when the EU is such a massive market for the iPhone (they have nearly a third of all mobile devices).

Of course, this could be an excellent moment for Digital Wallets and Personal AI to come together to make data portability work at scale.

And to make device-based Personal AI possible when the country data protection regs have real teeth.

READ

Japanese banks collaborate on DID

Many countries have turned to the banks for a ‘Federated ID’ scheme to help customers prove who they are across different financial services. And we’ve seen various degrees of success across Australia (ConnectID), Sweden (Bank ID), Canada (Interac), and most recently the UK (SelectID).

But Japan is trying something different. Using Empowerment Tech, and specifically, Decentralised Identity and verifiable credentials.

“Individuals will be able to store their data on their mobile phones as a transferable credential. This includes data such as their name, address, date of birth and driving licence stored on a mobile device.?

“The banks envision using digital certificates for opening bank accounts and credit/debit card issuance, which will be trialled by this year.”

It’s inevitable that federated ID schemes will begin to issue new, portable and private verifiable credentials to the same banking customers. But like the adoption of all disruptive tech, with bank ID it’s going to be an AND with digital wallets, not an OR, for a long time to come.

READ

People need to do much more with data than businesses - so why don’t we have our own data systems?

Iain Henderson’s Supply… Meet Demand blog makes an excellent argument for people-centric digital tools (aka Empowerment Tech). And how - and where - AI agents will fit in.

“Individuals have many more operational processes to run than organisations do. Organisations will typically have 20-30 high level processes that relate to customer management activity.

“But individuals have to deal with hundreds of processes because the individual is the point of integration for all parts of their life.

“If the smartphone had been invented before or at the same time as the commercial Internet, then the most logical architecture by far, for all parties, would be to have the individual as the manager of core personal information, with anyone who needed it subscribing to the individual.

“The ‘subscribe to me’ tools required in that model would be vastly simpler than the current architectural mess in which individuals have to manage organisation relationships and the associated terms on a one at a time basis.”

READ

Customer digital twins are easy to create - but what will we use them for?

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman has created his own digital twin. Trained on decades of his own books, speeches and podcasts.

And fascinatingly, he’s just interviewed his digital twin on a video podcast.

It’s worth watching, if only to see where the digital twin excels, and where it falls short. Yes, there are glitches here and there, and the conversation is sometimes too robotic. But apart from the twin’s hairstyle, the virtual Hoffman really does look and sound just like the real one, with all the insightful answers you’d expect.

Remember, this is the worst that digital twin tech will ever be.

Here’s my question to you: once you have a digital twin, trained on your transactions, habits, history and voice, what will you do with it? Attend appointments? Visit the bank? Go shopping?

Dave Birch and Kirsty Rutter have a new name for these virtual customers: ‘Custo-bots’.

These new digital agents will be able to automate much of the customer experience on behalf of users. And will require a whole new approach to CRM (Custo-bot Relationship Management).

Interestingly, they’ll trigger a new disruptive shift from ‘brands to APIs’. Because why would you ever need to show an advert to a bot? Rather, in the near future, brands will begin to request and respond to digital customer requirements. And start to interact directly about suitable products, services, pricing and terms.

Custo-bots are certainly going to be A Thing. And an exciting new branch of the Empowerment Tech tree. With the powerful combination of digital wallets, personal vaults and personal AI, it’s not only now possible, but inevitable.

But it’s going to give businesses painful whiplash.

Why? Because they’ve just spent the last two decades - and millions of dollars - trying to keep the bots out. With custo-bots, companies everywhere - especially the banks - are going to have to work out which customer bot is which. And which has been approved by the real customer, to do what, when, how and why.

Creating a digital twin - a customer-approved digital agent - is going to be easy.

But the more difficult question will be deciding where it’s allowed to show up, and what it’s allowed to do. And of course, dealing with the armies of fake custo-bots that are about to surround us in every digital channel.

(cough digital wallets cough).

HOFFMAN’S TWIN, CUST-BOTS

OTHER THINGS

There are far too many interesting and important Customer Futures things to include this week. So here are some more links to chew on:

• News: New UK Government rules out Digital ID cards READ
• Book: New book by Dr Matt Stroud: Digital Liberty: Power, Wealth and the Influence Machine READ
• Research: Latest Gartner report into Decentralised ID READ
• News: Meta's 'Pay or Consent' Personalized Ads Policy Violates DMA, EU Regulators Say READ
• Article: Consumers Are Using Digital Wallets for More Than Payments — Here’s How READ

And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.

And if you’re not yet signed up, why not Subscribe Now.