At MEF Connects: ID & Wallets in London last week, industry experts explored the future of trust, regulation, and authentication. From EU digital wallets to biometrics and network APIs, the event highlighted both the challenges and the innovations reshaping how we verify people – and machines – in an increasingly digital world. MEF’s ID & Data Programme Director Tim Green shares his key takeaways – the show is available to watch online now.
Members turned their attention to the challenge – and the promise – of digital identity at MEF’s flagship event
When it comes to digital identity, the world is entering a period of unprecedented danger – and extraordinary opportunity. That was the big takeaway from the MEF Connects: ID & Wallets in London on May 14.
On the ‘danger’ side, deep fakes are presenting criminals with elaborate new tools for stealing identities. Meanwhile runaway AI is presenting the industry with a complex new challenge: how to we assign identities to millions of virtual things?
And the positive side? It seems the world is – at last – technically and politically ready to embrace decentralised identity platforms that will move us much closer to solving these problems.
The event kicked off with a presentation by Andrew Bud, CEO of iProov, that summarised the current situation. He began by referencing some sobering examples of identity crime such as the scam perpetrated against UK engineering firm Arup. It lost $25 millions after scammers digitally cloned the company’s chief financial officer on a video conference call.
But Bud also highlighted the advances made in the field of decentralised identity and biometrics. Like many other speakers on the day he alluded to the arrival of the EU Digital Identity wallet in 2026, and the positive example this will set for other regimes around the world.
When it comes to digital identity, the world is entering a period of unprecedented danger – and extraordinary opportunity. That was the big takeaway…”
This positive outlook is shared by many industry observers. In a later session, Jon Shamah, Director of Global Trust Foundation, explained how a wide range of governments are currently building either national or decentralised wallet platforms.
His analysis chimed with the content of many industry reports. Earlier this year, for example, Juniper Research projected that that more than two-thirds of the global population will own a digital wallet by 2029, which translates to 5.6 billion people.
Along with launching wallets, regulators around the world are mandating new rules around age verification. Their progress was examined in the panel: Age Assurance: New Methods, Global Standards, and Industry Opportunities. Here, Iain Corby, Executive Director of the Age Verification Association and Mark Harvey, CEO of Sekura.id, outlined the rationale behind the regulation and how industry solutions are supporting it.
For many MEF members, the challenge of digital identity has direct revenue implications. SMS OTP has been a popular form of authentication for a decade, and has earned MEF members considerable income. Now, there’s a sense that this market is in decline.
Can it be replaced? Two panels explored the question.
The first was Telecoms in Identity Verification: Beyond SMS One Time. Here, Viktorija Radman, Telecom Business Director at Infobip, led a session that looked at the potential for network APIs to provide ‘background’ ID verification. It included a demo by Vodafone’s Adri Loloci that showed how fast and effortless this process can be.
A later session, Biometrics in Authentication: Opportunities, Challenges & Future Trends, saw a panel featuring iProov, Keyless, TMT ID and netnumber further debate the merits of facial authentication and network intelligence.
Of course, not every entity active in the digital space has a face. Which brings us to the identity challenge presented by AI agents. We are entering an era in which people and enterprises assign virtual agents to transact on their behalf. A panel entitled Building Blocks of Digital Trust: Privacy, Security & User Agency dived into the implications.
Panellists Mary Camacho (CEO, Holo & CPO, Visvere), StJohn Deakins (CEO of DataSapien), Thanasis Mandaltsis (CEO – Magic Agents) and Eric Drury (Director – ForthCo.io) pondered questions such as:
- How can we know if a digital entity is ‘human’ or not?
- If we are dealing with a bot, who does it ‘belong’ to?
- How can we track transactions between two AI agents?
- How can enterprises comply with data regulations in a world of intelligent agents?
The content of MEF Connects: ID & Wallets was packed with insights, while the pre and post event networking provided excellent opportunities for building relationships.
You can view all the sessions here.
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MEF Connects: ID & Wallets is designed to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of digital identity and mobile wallets, a focused, interactive forum where industry leaders, innovators, and visionaries converge to dissect the critical challenges and groundbreaking opportunities shaping our digital future.
From the complexities of secure digital identification to the transformative potential of digital wallets, we’ll delve deep into the technologies and strategies that are redefining how we interact with the digital world.
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