Funding for a software development project suggests the European Union is keen to reduce the friction that arises when users from different countries want to sign up for a service that requires identity verification.
The European Union wants to find an identification solution that can serve the continent’s various governments and companies as a homogeneous and simplified process for recognizing a person’s identity. Such a system could help speed up the recognition of travelers crossing the borders of each country, for example, but it would also serve to simplify the registration process in banking services or other platforms for users from different countries.
For this reason, it has financed the software development company Deverium with 2 million euros, together with its partners Corner Case Technologies.
Commenting on the project, Erika Maslauskaite, CEO of Deverium, said that EU funding gives them the opportunity to develop a minimum viable product and then scale it globally. Deverium, a Lithuanian company operating in the UK and Sweden, already has experience in cloud-based digital identity products, which they have acquired through previous collaborations with leading identity verification companies.
A simpler identity verification system would reduce the current complexity of registration processes at digital banks, for example. It is estimated that financial institutions in the European Union lose up to 5.7 billion euros a year due to ineffective identity verification processes. Processes that often require uploading a photograph of the ID, filling out long forms with personal information, etc.
Improving privacy
During the development of the project, Deverium will take into account the privacy concerns shared by many citizens. Therefore, its work will be based on the EU eIDAS standards, a regulatory framework with the aim of generating trust in electronic interactions and promoting seamless digital services in the EU.
The eIDAS Regulation provides for interoperability of national electronic identification systems between EU Member States, which “requires the development of a technologically neutral framework that does not favour any particular technical solution for the implementation of electronic identification,” according to the EU Digital Strategy Portal.
According to Maslauskas, the company’s CTO, “The platform is designed to give users greater control over their data privacy, using innovative techniques to protect personal information. This approach aims to simplify the onboarding process and reduce identity verification costs for businesses,” he says, adding that they are “employing advanced cryptographic methods and distributed architecture to build a secure and interoperable global digital identity platform.”
With such an identification product, users would benefit from simpler registration processes with foreign services, while companies would increase their profits by attracting more customers who previously gave up halfway through the process due to the complexity and annoying bureaucracy involved.
