An unlikely story of partnership between old and new is unfolding in Australia as Australia Post, the country’s 209-year-old “snail mail” delivery service is using digital identification technology to enable cryptocurrency exchanges to carry out KYC checks in a matter of minutes, thereby vastly simplifying the process of purchasing crypto in Australia.
Using Australia Post’s ‘Digital iD‘ service, Australian crypto buyers no longer have to spend days waiting for exchanges to verify their uploaded identity documents and photos before permitting them to trade, which is currently the case due to KYC and AML laws in the country. Instead, they can now complete their registration procedures in just a few minutes.
Removing Barriers to Entry
The main implication of Digital iD is that a major cryptocurrency adoption barrier that traditionally plagues exchanges – difficulty of proving identity satisfactorily – has been removed in one fell swoop. Instead of having to share documents and personal details multiple times with different platforms which are in itself a significant consumer security risk, users only need to register once with Australia Post’s Digital iD, and then share identity verification from Digital iD with any platform that is integrated with it.
As reported by local industry publication Micky initially, Digital Surge Director Josh Lehman underlined the usefulness of Digital iD to the platform, stating:
“Digital iD allows us to verify the identity of a prospective Bitcoin buyer in minutes, instead of the days it takes other exchanges. For the first time, an Australian can log on to a computer, punch in their driver’s licence or passport details, and be buying Bitcoin within minutes. We wanted to create an exchange that is safe, simple and quick to use, and Digital iD has enabled us to do that.”
Users are also given the opportunity to decide how much of their identity information that they want to share each time they link their Digital iD to a new platform, which reduces their exposure to security threats. An early adopter of this technology is Digital Surge, a Brisbane-based cryptocurrency platform that enables users to pay their bills with crypto as well as buy and sell crypto,
Giving his thoughts on the potential of Digital iD to scale and solve problems even beyond crypto exchange KYC procedures, Digital iD General Manager Cameron Gough said:
“Digital iD, gives people more control over the personal data they share with organisations. For example, most people hand over their driver’s licence to prove they can legally go to a bar, but all that is needed is a name and birth date – not that information plus your full residential address.”
Apart from Digital Surge, Digital iD is currently also working with two other cryptocurrency platforms namely Coinjar and Coin Loft. The long-term impact of its streamlined identity management process remains to be seen, but a number of observers believe that this could be the push to bring a substantial number of new Australian investors into crypto, as it saves them the stress and risk of individual KYC procedures on crypto exchanges.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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