Banks, Digital Identity Wallets and Profits

I just wonder about the finance industry and its relationship to identity and digital identity wallets. I was on a panel at an identity forum last month, and I was disappointed at the small number of attendees from the co-hosted financial forums that understood what digital identity wallets really were or what advantages they had.

The role of wallets to reduce KYC costs is recognised as great for the banks, but that just demonstrates their myopic view of society. Where is the ‘social responsibility’ that they proport to care about so much?

We all know why digital identity is so important to banks, but the incorporation of attributes and credentials into the identity is not yet fully appreciated by those in that industry.

One possibility is that financial institutions, and in particular banks, are more concerned about saving money, reducing risk, and profits to shareholders. They are not interested – nor should they be – in the ‘Societal Good’. They are commercial entities. That is why their interest in wallets is limited to fraud reduction, KYC and AML.  

But wallets are so much more, making life easier and safer for citizens in many day-to-day activities – not just banking related.

Its for this reason that I have some doubts that the banks would make good providers of our digital wallets.

But it might turn out that I have misjudged them.