It replaces cardboard cards with a SSN on them, with a cardboard card with a longer randomly generated key on it. There's no electronics involved from the consumer's perspective at all.
The key is provided on your e.g. loan application. The financial institution sends that key to the government via API, and receives back a Unique ID assigned to you as an individual that never changes. The financial institution should then dispose of the key you provided them.
The Unique ID is essentially used like an SSN; but the major differences are:
- The consumer never provides it directly
- The consumer's version of it (key) can be rotated freely
- If the Unique ID itself leaks it has no value, since the API Cycle (i.e. Key -> Unique ID) is part of the system that financial institutions would use, supplying the Unique ID would just throw an error (since it isn't a valid key).
So it completely different from SecurID, and is more akin to SSNs with most of the core issues resolved. Issuing cardboard cards with numbers on them isn't inherently complex, and is what we're already doing.
The most challenging part is getting financial institutions to implement the API calls and update application forms. You'd also have to remain vigilant that they aren't storing the Keys themselves longer than absolutely necessary.