Europe has opened a door to a universal wallet
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
Every shop on the road nowadays has a QR code you scan to make a payment using any UPI[0] compatible app. Thus, the age old problem of a shop not having change is quite rare nowadays (if you're not a minor that is, because all UPI apps are 18+). UPI is centered around your phone number, which is linked to your bank account as part of KYC. Thus, you can make a payment to anyone who doesn't even have UPI using their phone number, thus transferring funds directly into their bank account.
DigiLocker[1] is gaining popularity, with some airports allowing you in without physical ID if you have your ID on the app and scan yourself in. I've only been to one airport that does this before, and I sadly was not aware of it at the time.
It's nice that more and more countries are realizing the usefulness of this as tech becomes more and more ubiquitous and accessible to everyone.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface
I didn't know this, and neither do minors in India who use it for daily purchases.
Interesting, I haven't seen this in my city (Chennai).
I myself learned of this when I attempted to set up GPay, but was blocked from signing up because I'm not 18
And how are damaged phones handled?
I feel like far too much faith is being invested in far too fragile, fungible devices.
You have to maintain infra for two major mobile oses (which you have no control over with apple and google as the gatekeepers). You also stifle innovation in the mobile space (ultimately the government will only produce an iphone and an andeoid apk).
Identity theft via scams is super easy. You dont need to stsal devices you just nred to convince ppl to hand over their identities.
Along with that there is the whole cybersecurity nightmare which Ive frankly found government agencies world wide the least competent in handling.
Finally while digitisation makes processes easier, governments also tend to become lazier about servicing corner cases. Lets say for some reason you dont have some information for a form or need some special assitance woth a process, earlier you would be harassed by incompetent officials, but with sufficient fervor youd be able to get the job done. Now, with automated systems you will never be able to get help cause there is nobody to help you.
But so far, stolen phones are already enough to pay your rent. Wonder when it won't, but the wallet inside would buy you something even nicer.
You would also need to steal their fingers / faces.
But AFAIK for everything you can have a physical backup.
It’s not hard to imagine a future where Dutch farmers go to a gas (or charging) station on their way to a protest find they suddenly can’t use their money.
IDs are serious business, smartphones are surveillance devices, out of the government and the citizen controls and connected 24/7/365, they MUST NOT be used for anything serious. I do want to have a simple NFC reader for public authority and activities needed some data from the citizens (like a bank to open an account, or just a major-age verification to sell alcohol at a supermarket, being just able to to se age) but FROM MY eID card, not from a mobile app.
The system could be pretty simple, a grocery store authenticate as itself to a public service, the public service get the citizen ID, and know the grocery store can only get a "major age or not", no privacy issue in the process, no needs to flash Qr and so on. Similarly a police officer can read ANY eID document (let's say driving license, national ID card, passport, even a public school card) and from it accessing other docs depending on the activity he/she declare, again no privacy issue. But again no damn need of mobile stuff.
Oh, and aside, public money, public code, so all IDs MUST be open hardware and open-source, the chip, the middlewire and the service as well. So the "no privacy issue" is a thing any citizen can acknowledge or not.
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/display/D...
eID is a federated identity system that uses national electronic ID systems as the identity sources. That's useful especially for apps on the EU level, e.g. for customs, to submit what you're importing as a company.
In practice, I won't be able to use my phone as a replacement for my passport when traveling internationally. But I might be able to use my phone, in combination with my national ID card which has a NFC chip inside, to submit a government form in another EU country.
It could be done in a way that would work well, but it won't, because there's more money to be made by abusing people. So put me in the "nightmare" camp.
... your phone screen cracks, and you can't afford a new one, even if there was a way you could pay for it without a phone ...
This effortless convenience of spending money might be a corporate-technology dream, but it's going to be a nightmare for so many people.
Tech innovations are always a mixed bag, but there are some great ideas in this, like selective disclosure, where you don't have to reveal all your personal info (address on driver's license) when proving your age. Is uploading a picture of your physical credentials to pretty random web sites supposed to be a better solution?
I also think people deserve to have well described data and interactions, and their "wallet" should become a coherent place of organizing long term information. These standards create that possibility. Letting companies dominate and invent things to their needs as they go along is not a better solution.
It takes some strength from governments to do this properly, which some will point to as backward (witness the reaction to iPhone AI features). But companies have not found the end point of innovation, it needs to be kept open and directed by broad people needs, not the current shiny.
How will a centralized wallet used for everything solve the human factors problems?
We know there's a deep human factors issue here. Web sites and apps ask for permission seemingly all the time for as much as they can, and most people just agree, because they've learned that usually works.
Until it doesn't.
Here's a Fortune article of how BankID, a widely-used electronic ID in Sweden, is used in fraud, at https://fortune.com/europe/2024/06/21/why-going-cashless-has... :
"For Bagley, the fact that BankID is so commonplace is part of the problem. “It ends up not really being a security measure, but just another step in using a website,” she said. “You don’t really think twice about what the BankID app might say you are logging into.”"
You can blame Bagley for not double-checking the transfer before verifying, but she's not the only one. "Online fraud and digital crime in Sweden have surged, with criminals taking 1.2 billion kronor in 2023 through scams like the one Bagley fell for, doubling from 2021."
Who will do the education? The banks? The schools? If the latter, what subjects will be removed from the curriculum?
Who will verify the AI is trained correctly? Who is liable of it is not? How will it be updated as new frauds are discovered?
Will the solution require everyone to buy new phones? How much more will be destroy the world?
I don't know what you're imagining as an alternative.
User agreements are another example of failure. They give full disclosure, on a take-or-leave-it basis. Few people say no to GitHub when it means being blocked from participating in most software development projects.
Plus, very few actually read that full disclosure. I can guarantee you that most people do not come out of high school with sufficient training to read those agreements, much less immigrants like me who never received training in the Swedish legalese I am required to agree to use digital healthcare.
All these experiences tell me that a central personal information store as described will have exactly the same failures, and that selective disclosure will in practice be equally meaningless.
"Learn a credit card" is misdirection. We know from the number of people who declared bankruptcy due to credit card debt that they didn't all learn how to use it correctly, or had no alternative than taking on ruinous debt.
People going bankrupt through credit abuse is a separate issue from learning how to technically use such instruments. Many know how to "properly" use it, but have a weakness where the only solution may be to impose limitations. Many others are taken in by misleading tactics. Fine grained digital approaches can help those situations.
It is partially how you look at it. I want information systems to become coherent á la the semantic web, but in a specifically user-specific way (which is one of the ideas of Solid). I think that well defined digital credentials are an opportunity to give people a better view of the information they hold, and to enable ways to make issuers more accountable with a fine grained approach; eg evaluable axioms per credential fashioned after "law as code" approaches. This could be connected to a neuro-symbolic AI so the user can discuss scenarios outside transactions. Especially with an increase in inter-related credentials, that will make it easier to manage and less of a separate world that some institutions and companies control, which I think is incredibly valuable. Some of these ideas aren't possible yet, but we aren't going to get there by continuing to produce grey goo systems.
While credit has harmed some people (which is regrettable and should be resolved) it has enabled the vast majority of users to build better lives past other forms of capital. With digital systems and well defined data, the user can walk through clear, directly relevant, and private scenarios of what their next action will yield, without any dependency on a particular provider. But only if there is a forceful move to coherent data.
Which is why I gave other examples of the human factors issues, not just financial transactions: configurable cookie warnings, configurable app permissions, and user agreements.
> what it means to use a very fine grained proof
Except you know that bars, etc. are going to ask for more details, including full name, address etc. And they'll say it's needed to prevent known hooligans and troublemakers.
Will people stop going to the bars until the bars only request the minimum required information? No - or at least not more than people currently click off all the "I agree to this surveillance" buttons on a web page.
So people just accept, and enter. Then the bar asks for more, and more, and more, and people have been trained to just agree to everything, because they have very little power to say no.
I've already heard accounts of people who bring their passport instead of state id for the simple reason that it does not contain a scannable address. If it's expected that everyone always has the ability to provide any required information, simply saying no is hard.
> Fine grained digital approaches can help those situations.
"Can" is pulling a lot of weight. I can click off all the cookie trackers. The vast majority do not. Is that from an informed decision, or is that simply the easiest decision?
I can disable geolocation tracking on my browser, but then - oops! - the county web site showing me the upcoming vaccination times doesn't work because the site assumes everyone has geolocation turned on, and they never tested for someone who voluntarily disabled that option.
Build a system that expects coherent data, and you build a system where people get trained to provide anything which asked for, with poor support for those who opt-out.
I wouldn't expect this at all. Being visually recorded, maybe. I'd hope governments step in and prevent creating private databases around that.
I absolutely disagree that coherent data means people provide anything asked for.
You are more than making up for my "can" with your suppositions.
Cookies &c are examples of tech that got away without regulation when it was needed. This is regulation. It's needed.
It is 100% a worse option than a cloud drive.
Anyone in the digital ID space knows there's a war going on. States will adopt digital ID. And everyone is rushing to own it.
Google <stores> most of your data. If you have your tax records on gdrive, google so far cannot target ads based on that content (i can't say forsure if you attach your tax form in gmail nowadays)
With SOLID any site can simply say "we need your tax records to prove you're a human or combat fraud whatever".
SOLID and all other not-solutions like it make your consent as useless as android app permissions. Accept a huge list they don't even bother to show anymore or go away.
Remember how android 2.3 you still could deny internet access permission? With SOLID it will be the same. Full ID data will eventually move to expandable list of permissions you will give by default.
I bet benners thought very hard about all the math and network etc. But he's being a buffoon when it comes to understanding applicability.
This is not true. But there are human factors issues to solve. Personal AI will help.
Most of what google &c possess is inference and real-time metadata, which is the real dark magic. Giving people precise control over their identity and information via standards will be a huge gain, but it's not an easy task.
He is doing their work and trying to force regulations that are good for that terrible end state. He's working so that government help it, not put some controls, which we already have today btw
A messy, badly communicating shambles might well turn out to be the optimum approach to this problem. There is reason to believe that efficiency is a bad thing when it comes to being identified and tracked.