Category: Uncategorized

[Jane Adams]The final panel session of the afternoon of day one was entitled ‘Fantasy National ID’. Panelist were invited to describe their perfect national identity system (without any negative comments about existing or proposed real life systems).

Continue reading “Direct from the Digital Identity Forum 2”

[Jane Adams] It’s rare for a conference presentation to draw gasps of amazement from the audience, but Professor Russell Cowburn’s did. Presenting on behalf of Imperial College and Ingenia Technology, he described and demonstrated a system that used laser optics to determine a fingerprint from documents –  basically the biometrics of documents.

Continue reading “Direct from the Digital Identity Forum 1”

[Dave Birch] The first issue of this splendid new newsletter has arrived on my desk. You can download a PDF version of it from the publisher and see the quality for yourself in the comfort of your own home or office. If you subscribe before 1st November (ie, tomorrow) then this fine publication will arrive 12 times a year for the negligible sum of UKP 455 per annum. Did I forget to mention that I am member of the editorial board?

Technorati Tags: law, payments

Continue reading “E-finance and payments law and policy”

[Dave Birch]  I thought Digital ID Denizens might be interested in a couple of recent written Parliamentary answers that give more details about the UK government’s planned ID card scheme.

Technorati Tags: ID cards, RFID, travel

Continue reading “Written Parliamentary answers”

[Dave Birch] In the Peppercoin Small Payments Roundtable conference call, Mia Shernoff (Executive Vice President, Marketing, Chase Paymentech Solutions) said that in a recent survey of their merchants they had found that cost reduction was no longer the no. 1 requirement for new payment systems. Security and revenue enhancement scored higher.

Technorati Tags: costs, loyalty, micropayments, payments

Continue reading “Small Payments Roundtable comment”

[Caspar Bowden] I am writing to you today to bring to your attention an important new initiative from Microsoft that has the potential to greatly enhance privacy protection for individuals worldwide. We call it the Identity Metasystem.

Technorati Tags: identity, microsoft, privacy

Continue reading “Microsoft and the identity metasystem”

[Dave Birch] I was on BBC Radio 5 yesterday in a brief debate about cashlessness between me and a representative of the European Security Transport Association, who are complaining that cash is being marginalised in Europe. I’ve been thinking about quite a bit recently because of some projects I’m involved in but also because last month, Aneace had set me thinking about the cost of cash again. He correctly noted that merchants truly believe cash is cheaper than plastic (as was confirmed by the UK survey we discussed before). He makes the point that until there is no cash, a reduction in cash doesn’t save merchants much money. But what if it goes the way of digital TV, and there’s an “analogue switch-off” when the legacy wonga becomes worthless? Who should pay to complete the transition? What about the last few people who still want to use notes and coins, and therefore waste everyone else’s money on cash registers and ATMs, security transport and jammed vending machines. Back in 1997, I wrote (in an e-cash fanboy piece for the New Labour think-tank DEMOS) about this issue.

Technorati Tags: costs, e-purse

Continue reading “Who will pay?”

[Dave Birch] Still at the RSA Conference Europe, I bumped into the BT guys in the hotel after breakfast and they told me that there was a news release well before I got up this morning confirming that BT has bought Counterpane.  That counts as pretty interesting.

Technorati Tags: security

Continue reading “Counter culture”

[Dave Birch]  Here I am down in Nice at the RSA Conference Europe, which really is nice, since it’s sunny and beautiful and the sea is blue.  John Madelin’s session on federation was well-attended and interesting: John was talking about identity management (IDM) in business and teasing out the elements that are complicated (messing around with certificates) as opposed to the elements that are complex (connectivity).  His point was that the "perfect storm" of pervasive networks and ubiquitous connectivity is creating an environment where something big, something revolutionary must be coming to make a fundamental change in the way identity is managed.  I may have misunderstood, but his categories of complicated and complex seemed to overlap with the connection / disconnection model that we use in technology roadmapping.  I will definitely go back to his Identity Society wiki to ponder further.  I did agree with one of this main conclusions, though it pains me to say it: no one person knows everything about identity!

Technorati Tags: business, federation

Continue reading “Federation in Nice”

[Dave Birch] Costa Coffee is going to launch a prepaid card in the UK, following a 22 store pilot which saw a tenth of customers sign up for the combined prepaid and loyalty offering. This isn’t the first tall skinny card with vanilla essence. I often use the US Starbucks card in case studies and workshops. Now it it is coming to the UK as well. And it will be internationally interoperable, sort of like, well a Visa for the hyperactive. We’ve often discussed the potential for a retailers’ assault on the retail payment franchise, so this should be one to follow. One boring note though: since the card will work in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and Thailand then it must one of those old-fashioned stripe cards.

Technorati Tags: credit cards, e-purse, loyalty, payments, prepay, retail

Continue reading “Low fat hazelnut frappachino on credit”