The Identity Marketplace

Individual identity is the cornerstone of every relationship, personal or commercial. The ability to confidently establish true identity makes commercial transactions possible. Similarly, a significant amount of economic pain and angst, to individuals and organizations alike, results from uncertain, compromised or wrong assertions of the identity of people.

For any successful identity-dependent service, there are three components: technology, information and people. Technology is important, information is helpful, but people are essential. It is the individual person that is the focus and starting point of every Arizona Identity program. Programs and services from Arizona Identity mitigate pain and loss associated with – and increase confidence in and adoption of – identity-dependent transactions.

The Emergence of Automated Identity Transactions™

The “identity transactions” marketplace is now emerging, just as the automation of credit card authorization did in the 1980s and 1990s and the automation of merchant account settlement in the 1970s and 1980s. Those transformations in the so-called credit card industry gave rise to huge multi-billion dollar companies – and great benefits to individual shoppers and store owners. In a like manner, the rise of automated identity transactions will create tremendous benefits to individuals and companies.

There are various macroeconomic and social market drivers causing the

identity transaction market to accelerate, among them:

► the legislation and “best practices,” particularly to prevent brand damage;

► an over-arching post-911 emphasis on better authentication methods;

► the increasing public concern over identity theft and account fraud;

► the cost, complexity, inconvenience and insecurity associated with current methods of authentication using paper and decades-old magnetic stripe technology;

► forthcoming changes in the financial services field following landmark settlements and mergers; and perhaps most of all,

► the relentless pursuit by consumers of greater safety, speed and convenience around any type of transaction.

The Key to Fees: Automated Identity Transactions™

Overwhelmingly, identity verification today is a manual process that produces no revenue – only cost and risk. Now, true identity authentication of consumers at the point-of-sale, at the airport, in the hotel lobby, in the physician’s office or at the branch bank, is becoming automated. This automation of identity – identity transactions -- will produce huge new volumes of authentication transactions.

Aside from financial transactions, there are 30 billion health care transactions each year in the US alone. There are about 34 million active frequent flyers worldwide “authenticating” manually for e-tickets, security scans, even trips to the airport lounge. Over 169 million movie theater ticket purchases were made by consumers.

The point is, the list of now-manual authentication transactions or access transactions, great and mundane, that can be automated electronically – that is, earn a fee, is endless.

The volume of identity transactions will be tremendous because not only will credit and debit be authenticated via automated means, but also check, loyalty, health care, “trusted traveler,” wire transfer, age verification, mortgage loan processes, background checks and many other transactions.

Consultancy IDC projects the identity management market will grow at a rate of 32% annually for the next few years and reach $4 billion in 2007.

Other business leaders and visionaries see the same importance and growth for identity and related technology:

“Virtually every application in the future will make use of identity information – for security, for billing, for recognizing friends and customers, for conducting our daily business of commerce and political and social interaction . . . identity management services and applications will transform our world.” – Esther Dyson, Release 1.0

 “Identity-based functions include authentication, authorization, security and access. Those functions support applications such as billing and payment, direct marketing and CRM, provisioning, roaming, presence management, workflow and knowledge management. It’s hard to think of a sector that can’t use these functions, but the leaders are those that are personal-data-rich and change- and security-intensive, such as financial services, travel services and health care.” – Esther Dyson, Release 1.0

“I believe all transactions at the point-of-sale will soon are electronically signed.  Authentication might be a PIN, a fingerprint or a secret code.  To me this is about how you bring it to this market faster than anybody else.” – Charlie Foote, chairman, First Data Corp. quoted in Business Week, May 7, 2003