Most smartphones nowadays come with built-in Near Field Communication technology (NFC). Tiny NFC chips have the power to turn phones into mobile wallets by enabling customers to make quick and secure contactless payments with the flick of a wrist, using apps like Apple Pay or Google Pay.
With close to 4 billion active smartphones today, global smartphone penetration is at an all-time high. There are more than 2 billion NFC-enabled devices, with most being phones. Over 20% of the world’s population already has access to NFC.
NFC is nothing new. It is an evolution of radio frequency identification (RFID), a decades-old wireless connectivity solution widely used in hotel key cards and entry passes. NFC is more fine-tuned than RFID and operates at a much shorter range of around 4cm to 10cm, making NFC a more secure solution.
Apple’s adoption of NFC in the iPhone 6 and onwards massively boosted the profile of NFC. NFC has many other applications besides mobile payments. It is found in contactless credit cards, transit passes, and modern identity documents like e-passports and driver’s licences. Around the world, some 150 countries now have an ID card that is NFC chip-enabled. These cards are securely encrypted, and the data on the NFC chip cannot be forged or changed. See: ShareRing Me.
The steps involved in NFC identity verification are simple. First, a customer would snap or upload a picture of their NFC-enabled ID document using their camera phone. The software uses OCR to read and extract the writing on the document. Next, the user holds the camera up to their face to allow real-time facial recognition to match their features against the image on their ID document. Then the software scans the document’s Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) to extract all relevant information.
Finally, the ID document is tapped against an NFC reader in the smartphone. This reads the relevant information via the document’s embedded NFC chip and automatically verifies it against the OCR, MRZ, and facial recognition data to add an extra layer of verification. See: seven things that make self-sovereign identity different.
NFC chips in ID cards are usually issued by government bodies, so the information extracted is highly likely to be authentic and verifiable. NFC will be the future standard for ID cards for some time and is supremely convenient for customers who already have NFC readers in their pockets. In addition to other ID verification checks such as AI facial recognition, NFC helps build more robust eKYC solutions, so digital ID providers can ensure their customers are exactly who they say they are. See: the three verification levels inside the ShareRing Vault.
Where we sit.
ShareRing has been building this technology since 2018. The encrypted Vault and self-sovereign ID model we put in the original whitepaper are the same architecture under everything we deploy today.
If you want to discuss privacy KYC at country scale, the door is open at sharering.network/contact.
By ShareRing Team of ShareRing.
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