Digital Identity Blog

MEDICI Global’s Invisible FinTech Podcast visits Identity and Tokenization with Trust Stamp

Trust Stamp Chief Innovation Officer and former VP of Humanitarian & Development (Digital Identity) at Mastercard, Raman Narayanswamy, joined MEDICI Global for an episode in their Invisible FinTech - Open Banking and APIs podcast series hosted by Amit Goel (Founder of MEDICI).

Amit and Raman discussed the significance of tokenization in digital identity, with key insights highlighted below. Listen to the full episode on how tokenization enhances security, privacy, and consumer control for globally inclusive identity frameworks.

Amit: Could you give us a very high level overview of what Trust Stamp does, and how it looks at identity and tokenization?

Raman: Trust Stamp’s technology tokenizes biometrics, which is one of the hardest data sets in processing aspects because of its “fuzzy” nature. We work with tokenization because we are primarily a privacy-first, dignity-first company. Today, digital identity does not solve for many of the aspects of privacy and consumer control, or users’ control of their own identity. Our focus has been on taking existing data-driven, or specifically biometrics-driven identity, and making it able to prove identity with zero-knowledge, or in complete blindness, to say “I am the same person, I exist, I am here”. That’s our primary goal. We have started with biometrics, and we have been able to prove that we can do token matching in the fuzzy realm using biometrics

Amit: How do you think digital identity is evolving beyond authentication and KYC? A lot of people, when talking about digital identity, talk about KYC, authentication, etc. I think some points that you touched upon suggest that it is a much broader field.

Raman: You highlighted two very important aspects. Most identity platforms start from KYC - they are centered around KYC. In consumers’ relationships with any institution, the KYC component is probably only one time, or maybe once in every five years or so. You don’t produce a driver's license to get into your car to drive - that is the kind of analogy I want to bring to the table here. Authentication is 99% of your digital existence. It is where you assert your identity, saying that I exist, I am here, and I am the same person. We flipped the model on its head and asked how we can make identity functional, and not just a KYC component. It has to work across the board, whether it is tied to your mobile device, whether it is on a chip-based card, or whether it’s just you, yourself. Can an identity work if I just show up without any device?

Amit: What are the frameworks we devise for certain geographies and industries, and what are the problems are they trying to solve? For our listeners who are coming from FinTech and financial services, I think it is important for them to understand how the experts think about it.

Raman: Geographies add significant complexity to how identity or any data is processed. For the most part, solutions out there are designed for the connected world. If you have internet connection or cell phone connection, most of your identity works quite seamlessly. It doesn’t work very well in hard to reach places, where a large portion of this planet lives. You cannot reach them there; it does not work in an offline context. How can we push the cryptography and the processing capability to the edge? Can any device in the marketplace become an acceptance device, specifically for identity, and in the future, for any other transaction? It is extremely important to create a solution that will scale across the board, all the way from connected environments to offline environments.

Amit: What actually is tokenization of identity, and why is it necessary?

Raman: If you want to process your biometrics today, or if you want to produce a digital identity today, you basically end up leaving your fingerprints everywhere. How do you know that the service provider is not storing it and using it at a future time? How do you know that it is not being intercepted or prone to a man-in-the-middle attack? All of these identifiers are directly linked to you, so any compromise in the digital realm is going to have devastating consequences for the consumer. Imagine if your biometric was compromised. What is the remediation here? Compare it to a financial instrument. If you lose your credit card or your debit card, they can be very easily revoked and replaced. The loss can be quantified, monetized, and replaced. That is not the case in terms of identity. The reason for tokenization when looking at identity is that it is un-linkable to the human - only the human can link it to themselves. It is completely obfuscated and cannot be reversed-engineered to point to a single person.

Amit: I have been asked this question many times, especially with respect to biometrics. If somebody steals your biometric data, what happens? The person has only one set of biometrics, so that can pose a big challenge.

Raman: It is an insurmountable challenge. That is why in the tokenization realm, you can revoke and reissue a token. You never compromise the underlying sensitive value; the biometric is never the ecosystem, anywhere. We derive the tokens using the biometric. If the token gets compromised for whatever reason, the keys can be revoked and new tokens can be issued. We provide this granular control.

Most people talk about consumer control of their digital identity, but consumer control doesn’t exist until and unless a consumer can actually revoke it themselves. Today, most of your digital identity is controlled by institutions. They give you the digital identity, and everything is controlled by them. What if the consumer was able to say, “I don’t want to be part of the relationship anymore”? That is true consumer control. With tokenization, any party, either the network that is servicing the token, the issuer of the token, or consumer themselves, can revoke the token for security and privacy purposes.

Amit: What type of tokenization are we talking about broadly here? Is it hardware-based or software-based? Given that there are so many different types of needs and scenarios, how do you fit the model into various needs and scenarios which are out there?

Raman: The token transformation itself is software-based. The matching component can also be software-based. For the most part, the solution is delivered as APIs and SDKs. It can be pushed to the edge and pushed to offline environments. We do prefer certain hardware restrictions in terms of processing capability, etc., and we prefer devices that have secure execution environments if the process needs to be pushed to the edge, especially if you make it an acceptance device. For the most part, the solution needs no specific hardware - no specific scanners for the biometrics, etc. Any smartphone with a five megapixel camera can process the biometric without having the expensive physical scanners in the marketplace.

Amit: How do we push this to the edge? Are you talking of decentralized identity here?

Raman: Yes, it works both as a decentralized and centralized model. Typically, centralized models are in large ecosystems such as national IDs, EIDs, or other large networks. If you are looking at verifiable credentials like COVID19 certificates, these are typically decentralized.

Amit: What are the biggest drivers in this marketplace? There are a lot of realities on the ground; things are changing fast in certain countries. What is driving this particular space?

Raman: When we started, the biggest concern was primarily privacy. All of the biometric implementations we saw were challenging. They were all centrally managed, centrally located, and they couldn’t really scale beyond immediate government use. How do you put a biometric solution out there that cannot be exploited? How do you put it out there for commercial use? That is the major challenge. The fundamental component is privacy. How can we exchange biometrics without ever having to store biometrics anywhere in the ecosystem – not in the last mile, and not in the central server? Is there a mechanism where we can actually assert an identity without ever exposing the underlying sensitive value, in this case the biometric itself?

Amit: It may also be very useful for our audience to know of some examples of use cases for FinTech. From an identity and trust perspective, what are some use cases you can mention?

Raman: Look at what’s emerging in the market today, like digital wallets, etc. Most of them are protected using a passcode or PIN, or they are device-dependent using a FIDO-like solution where you need a smartphone to be able to process financial transactions either through a digital wallet or something stored on the phone itself. They have a limited reach because they only work in the connected world with someone who has an expensive smartphone in their pocket or other device access. How do we extend these technologies to anybody and everybody? How do I become the financial instrument itself? Can I unlock that capability virtually, where only I can unlock it and authorize the processing of a payment? How do we tie a virtual wallet to an identity where you don’t need an instrument, like a smartphone, or a payment card? You can just walk up to a payment terminal and assert your identity by using your face and a second modality, making it multi-factor.

Amit: Given that you were at Mastercard, handling digital identity, how did that transition happen to Trust Stamp? What was it that you looked forward to as the Chief Innovation Officer of Trust Stamp?

Raman: Trust Stamp came through Mastercard’s Start Path program, their incubator for innovative companies. We took their technology and had them implement certain ideas, specifically for the underserved community and for financial inclusion. How do I provide an identity to somebody who has nothing – no piece of paper that can prove who they are? How do you give them a mechanism to transact digitally and build a digital existence without a government backing or government identity? That was the principle behind what we started at Mastercard.

I feel that there is tremendous potential in the technology, especially when it comes to where this tokenization can go - not just biometrics, but all personal information. Today, personal information is exchanged maybe at best over secure channels, but it is still exchanged in raw form. Can we tokenize and bring fuzzy matching to raw data?

Where this token technology can go is limitless. Once you enter into the world of tokens, the possibilities extend beyond the boundaries of what current security models will allow you to do. Because you are dealing in tokens, or one-way cryptograms or hashes, you are not really exposing anything. You are eliminating the privacy and security concerns you would have in a normal digital transaction.

Amit: Is there anything else that you would like to share?

Raman: Consider today what has happened in some parts of the world where digital identity, especially biometrics, have been left behind and compromised. With tokenization technology, this data could not have been exploited. The keys can be revoked and the data can be nullified very easily, without any compromise to the citizens. As we go more and more into a digital existence, this becomes very critical. How do we prevent exploitation of digital assets? How do we ensure consumer trust on a platform where they know that they are in full control and there are mitigation mechanisms if anything were to go wrong? That is the most fundamental way to look at how identity and data processes will go in the future. We believe that zero-knowledge-proofs will become the cornerstone for good security, absolute privacy, and even human dignity when it comes to digital existence.

Amit: During the introduction, you talked about your company having a privacy-first and dignity-first approach to identity. What is dignity-first? Can you expand on that and also touch upon how inclusion becomes an important aspect?

Raman: Take a fundamental concept: I am human, and there are certain privileges that come with that. Because I don’t exist on any government’s radar or civil registry, I am actually excluded. I am excluded from having a bank account, from working in the digital economy, getting benefits, etc. I am forced to live in a cash economy. That itself is debilitating because it is the most inefficient way to live; you practically don’t exist.

The second aspect of it involves the cultural component. If you don’t have these things, getting access to digital economies becomes almost impossible. How do I prove that I’m Raman if I don’t have anything like paperwork to prove it? Moreover, imagine if we only used face technologies for biometrics. What happens when you go to countries where women cannot participate because of their cultural limitations around taking a facial picture? How do you solve for an identity which will work across the board, crossing cultural boundaries and boundaries where abject poverty excludes you from the digital marketplace? How do I provide health services, other financial services, or even basic educational services to you digitally, if you cannot exist digitally?

Not only is privacy the most “holy grail” to achieve, but so is dignity and making sure the solution addresses anything and everything that can possibly go wrong, especially from the culture aspect. We make sure we leave no stone unturned, especially from a perspective of inclusion.

About MEDICI Invisible FinTech - Open Banking & APIs
This Podcast by MEDICI is hosted by Amit Goel (Founder of MEDICI). And focuses on the part of FinTech innovation that is invisible to the end-customers. The e-plumbing and financial rewiring that is rewriting how financial services are delivered and experienced. Fintech, banking and tech folks come here to learn about how financial firms (old and new) are leveraging the power of open banking and APIs

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