If we drop UK digital ID, how will we know which AI is which?
Plus: Are verifiable credentials now boring?
Hi everyone, thanks for coming back to Customer Futures.
Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around Empowerment Tech. AI Agents, digital wallets, Personal AI in and the future of the digital customer relationship.
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Hi folks,
This week we’ve had more hype, hubris and hysteria about the latest Chinese AI models (Kimi K3 looks astonishing), OpenAI agents jail-breaking their secure sandboxes (erm), and a whole bunch of exciting, if not confusing, news about digital ID.
I can’t say it enough, or loud enough. It’s never been more important to understand the future of the digital customer.
So welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.
I’m still writing these newsletters by hand, by the way. If that counts for anything anymore.
Not because I’m some laggard. Quite the opposite in fact. I use a vast amount of AI during my day. Token limits, pah.
No, I write because it helps me work out what I think. None of it is fully formed until I write it down. Until it spills onto the page. Or iPhone. Because you can’t get someone else to do your thinking. You can’t outsource your push-ups, as it were.
Along with plumbing and woodcraft, critical thinking, empathy and hugs might just be the only things we humans are left with after the great AI transition.
I don’t know about you, but I can start to see - and actually feel - the slow drift of brain numbness creeping in. As AI increasingly writes our words, reads our words and lobotomises our attention.
No, I’ve not yet started crafting bowls made of wood, or doing electrics. But writing seems to be more and more essential. Or at least the critical thinking does.
I guess what I’m saying is that writing is easy. But thinking is hard.
And for what it’s worth, writing this newsletter has been one of the most personally transformative things I’ve ever done. So thanks everyone for continuing to read them, and for being on the journey with me.
In this week’s edition:
If we drop UK digital ID, how will we know which AI is which?
Claude gets KYC - but identity was never the destination
There’s a huge difference between a traveller and a customer
Are verifiable credentials now boring?
… and much more
Let’s Go.
If we drop UK digital ID, how will we know which AI is which?
Andy Burnham is now the UK’s new Prime Minister. And his first order of business? To scrap the plans for a government-issued digital ID.
Apparently:
“The time and resource that was going to be spent on a national ID scheme will go instead to where it’s most needed, such as helping with the cost of living”.
If only, if only, the comms and strategy for digital ID wallet had been clearer, and sooner.
I’ve written much more about the UK’s ID wallet comms fiasco before. I use the word fiasco, because it’s the very word that the government’s own investigation used to describe the launch.
“The government’s early attempts to set out its plans for digital ID were nothing short of a fiasco. To the public this announcement came out of the blue and made little sense.”
If you’ve now lost track of what the actual UK policy is, and why a digital ID wallet could be useful, I don’t blame you. It’s exhausting keeping up with the mis-steps.
Sarah Gold pointed out this week that dropping the digital ID programme doesn’t scrap the need for citizen identity. Especially for those parts of the economy that can’t have, or won’t have, a mobile phone, a driving license or a passport.
Well, we’re now set back a few years, at least.
Or are we?
Richard’s Oliphant made an important observation. That scrapping Digital ID doesn’t mean scrapping digital wallets.
“The furore over a national digital ID scheme has obscured the fact that Government Digital Service has been busy developing the GOV UK Wallet. This is an app that will be hosted on citizens’ mobile phones and will contain verifiable credentials (VCs) including a mobile driving licence and digital passport.
“These VCs will contain many of the same attributes that would have been provided by a national digital ID (name, date of birth, nationality, biometric photo). This workstream is separate from the proposal for the national digital ID scheme. I have seen no suggestion (as yet) that the GOV UK Wallet (+VCs) will be scrapped, and nor should it be.
“The UK, like other countries, must embrace trustworthy, cryptographic VCs for proving age, identity and eligibility in transactions and interactions – both online and in-person.”
So far, it looks like the wallet stuff, Gov.UK, has been left intact. It is a huge difference. And has huge implications.
Here’s my take: however you look at it, ‘Digital Public Infrastructure’ (DPI - think digital ID, payments and data) needs Digital Personal Infrastructure too.
Aka tools that live on the side of the citizen, the customer, the consumer. Aka wallets.
‘Empowerment Tech’, as some (well, I) call it.
Wallet or not, there’s another hidden knock-on effect of dropping digital ID that might be the most devastating. Impacting the £Bns of data opportunities that aren’t happening today because of a lack of a digital ID.
Including making customer data portable between providers. And across govt departments.
Because citizens are going to start - and have already started - using AI, and specifically AI agents, with their personal data. Already showing up at the front door of business and digital government.
Check out what Tom Loosemore is writing about. My favourite take of his:
“AI Agents will join up government before government joins up government”
Which mirrors my view: The customer experience is about to be disrupted… by the customer themselves.
Why am I banging on about AI again? Because we just accidentally killed off being able to answer a critical question: How will we know that any particular AI tool - and especially an autonomous AI agent - is working on behalf of the customer or citizen?
We desperately need new, smarter digital tools to trust people (which human?), systems (which platform?) and businesses (which company am I really dealing with?).
In other words, we need KYC + KYB + KYA.
The shambles of a UK digital wallet rollout - and this week’s ID scheme cancellation - has not only potentially put those wallet capabilities back a few years, but risks the UK growth agenda full stop.
Data is at the heart of the digital economy. And digital wallets - and digital identity - is what enables that data to flow.
So once again, it’s one step forward, two steps back.
UK GOV ID FLIP FLOP, RICHARD’S TAKE, SARAH’S TAKE
Claude gets KYC - but identity was never the destination
Anthropic can now ask consumer users for a govt ID and a live selfie before they are allowed to access some features. They’re using Persona, the same controversial platform chosen by OpenAI.
But Simon Taylor points out the obvious hole:
“KYC works on the people who were never the real problem.
“It filters the underage, the casually banned, the obviously sanctioned, the lazy. Useful, and it raises the cost of misuse at the margin.
“It does very little to the actor it’s sold to stop. A government ID won’t stop someone distilling a model through the API. It won’t stop a jailbreak. A state actor or fraud ring arrives with synthetic or stolen documents, the same way they already clear bank onboarding. OpenAI’s own developer forum has a walkthrough showing org verification is beatable.
“Finance is the proof. The most identity-checked industry on the planet, every account screened against a watchlist, every payment monitored.
“The world still launders $800 billion to $2 trillion through it every year. Under 1% gets seized.”
Exactly. But then he points out the missing piece of the jigsaw:
“I expect ID checks to go baseline across every frontier lab within a year. I also expect the real security fight to move to the model layer, where it belongs. And it potentially unlocks much more utility.
Agents that can buy things
Wallets and credentials
Human "approvals' for AI tasks
Bingo.
“Wallets and credentials”. Exactly the opportunity. Because it would be ridiculous for the AI platforms to spend their time and money holding a vast range of ID data when they can just ask for the minimum data they need. Including citizenship if needed (without needing the address, for example).
What most folks miss is that wallets and credentials are soon going to be the new rails for AI agents. Because AI Agents are naturally decentralised things. Across borderes, across sectors, across use cases.
It would be ludicrous to assume there will be some central registry of ‘all global AI Agents’, a kind of database in the sky for all AI identity.
You see, KYC should never be the goal. ‘Digital trust’ should be. For people, businesses and AI. Which means more wallets and credentials ‘at the edge’, not more digital ID checks and spaghetti APIs everywhere.
In Fintech terms, for digital wallets and credentials, it’s still only 2014. But it’s going to happen quickly.
I can see a path to 300-400M digital ID wallets in actual use over the next 24 months.
Are you ready?
There’s a huge difference between a traveller and a customer
A customer is someone interacting with one business. One transaction. One account. But a traveller is someone interacting with every business, across an entire journey.
Why should you care?
Because today’s ‘connected trips’ are actually pretty broken. Fragmented, repeated steps, bad data, poor handoffs, little personalisation and manual re-entry of the same data. Over and over again.
Think about it. A single international trip can easily involve seven or more organisations. Airlines, airports, hotels, rail operators, car hire, insurance, payments, border control and all the rest.
But the only true 360 degree view of the customer… is the customer themselves.
The traveler’s perspective is the only place where the whole journey exists.
Starting with the individual is the only way to stitch together the moments, the tickets, the reservations, digital identities, passenger preferences, bookings, reference numbers, travel connections and personal data etc
So the opportunity is to give travellers their own digital tools. Their own digital presence. Their own channel.
Meaning they can bring everything together, warpped around their personal needs, their identities, and their specific context. Making their data portable, uncovering new insights and smoothing out the experience on their side.
And soon… allowing software agents to do all that on their behalf.
Here’s my point. This can’t be achieved by a single airline, hotel chain, social platform or backend integration alone. It can only be achieved by the individual. From their POV.
Ironically, the very fragmentation of a trip is what makes travel and hospitality the most likely place for a new digital wallet to emerge.
And it feels inevitable.
Why?
Because a wallet benefits everyone.
For the traveler? It’s seamless connections, more convenience, less time wasted, new insights, less stress, and a better CX. And for the business? It’s smarter personalisation (without being creepy), whole new revenue models, and even lower fraud.
This idea of ‘passenger-not-just-customer’ is already showing up in a few places. In the EU, the Digital Identity Wallet roll out is underway. And one of the marquee cases? Travel and hotels. Proof of identity for bookings, check-in and transfers.
And in India, the DigiYatra app has been used by over 75M people for seamless travel across a range of airports. All using a portable digital identity wallet under the control of the passenger.
Across the global airline industry itself, the IATA OneID programme has already defined, and is now rolling out, digital wallet features for passengers across multiple countries, airlines, border crossings, airports, and even retailers.
One of the first passenger credentials? ‘Needs wheelchair’.
I love that. Remember, wallets don’t just need to be about identity and all sorts of heavy lifting with age and address and all the rest. Sometimes the simplest use cases and the most important, and the most valuable.
Proving you need a wheelchair is precisely an example of creating value across a fragmented trip. Where today, every organisation can only see one customer, in one context, in isolation. By definition, they can’t see the whole trip.
It’s about giving the data back to the individual, to share with every business that needs it, on their own terms. Enabling a whole new passenger experience, smoothing out the broken steps, and making the trip smarter at every turn.
Now look again…
You’ll soon see this same model - of Empowerment Tech, where the individual is at the centre of the experience - show up everywhere.
Are you a bank customer, or a couple buying a house? Are you a train ticket customer, or a family going on a holiday? Are you an insurance customer? Or someone who’s just had a flood and moving home? Are you a ticketholder in RowJ Seat29, or someone who has been following the band since their first gig?
I just don’t think folks are ready for what’s coming.
Are verifiable credentials now boring?
Many scoff at the the Gartner Hype Cycle.
And somewhat reasonably. Go back 5-10-15 years, and see how many of their expectations have been spot on for any particular innovation. Maybe a couple?
But this is a great catch from John at Sezoo:
“Whether you believe the hype cycle or not, it’s still somehow pleasing to see Gartner showing Verifiable Credentials leading on the slope of enlightenment.
“Some of course have been enlightened for longer than others.
“Verifiable Credentials have been the fuel for much our work over the last decade. Right now W3C VCs are an essential ingredient for the UNECE-UN/CEFACT initiatives such as United Nations Transparency Protocol, Global Registry Information Directory, and United Nations Verifiable Trade Documents.
“As should be apparent from that list, the socio-economic value of Verifiable Credentials is way way more than “just” digital identity.
“Gartner’s report is understandably limited by its title, but verifiable credentials don’t start, or stop, with digital identity.”
Yup.
Enlightenment means starting to be accepted. It means starting to become common.
It means starting to be boring.
Having spent 10 years talking about verifiable credentials, writing about and presenting on them, designing and shipping products with them, and selling VC technology all over the world, I’d agree with the Gartner position.
Right now, maybe only a few folks are actually enlightened, as John says. But it’s the concept of VCs is spreading like one of those great breakthrough ideas of our time. Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.
Oddly, I’m betting that AI agents will use them at scale before humans do. Check out what Mastercard and Google around ‘Verifiable Intent.’
Enlightenment indeed.
JOHN ON GARTNER, VERIFIABLE INTENT
A longer list of things to track
There are SO many interesting and important Customer Futures things happening at the moment. Here are just a few from my open tabs:
Post: What if Credit Unions have been building tomorrow’s trust infrastructure all along? READ
Article: I got my AI agent to sort out the Wise payment transfer to Denmark READ
Post: What if your AI guardrails are already obsolete? READ
Opinion: Here’s what critics of digital IDs skip… the tracking they fear is already here, and not just from advertisers READ
Article: The biometric photo in the PID (EUDI Wallet) is becoming mandatory… Except it is not READ
Opinion: Context is rapidly becoming the most important signal in security READ
Post: The Court Ordered Zuckerberg’s Team to Take the Glasses Off - That Should Tell You Everything READ
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.
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