Is LinkedIn a massive digital ID network hiding in plain sight, and The New (Travel) Agents
Plus: The days of entering long forms at checkout are numbered, and why you (probably) won't be able to pay with the EU Digital Identity wallet anytime soon
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Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around digital wallets, Personal AI and digital customer relationships.
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Hi folks,
Another excellent week for Empowerment Tech. With lots of amazing research coming out about the potential for digital wallets and trust.
And of course lots of AI progress on the side of the individual.
It’s another chance to unpack what it all means for the future of being a digital customer.
So welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.
In this week’s edition:
The New AI (Travel) Agents
Is LinkedIn a massive digital ID network hiding in plain sight?
The days of entering long forms at checkout are numbered
… and much more
Let’s Go.
The New AI (Travel) Agents
Phocuswrite has just released its ‘Travel Innovation and Technology Trends for 2025.’
And who would have thought it. The sector is about to be rocked by two huge forces.
AI + Digital Identity.
“It will be easy for travelers to store their identity credentials as well as their payment information and personal preferences in one secure place and use them anywhere in their travels, from shopping to booking to in-destination.
“Travelers will be able to connect their digital wallet to travel sites or apps […] so their personal preferences stored in their wallet are automatically applied to their search.
“Customers will no longer be compelled to select checkboxes and filters across myriad shopping websites. Just a one click connection applies all presets in each case.
“There are plenty of uses of digital identity on-trip as well, pairing with biometrics to streamline everything from airport security to hotel check-in.
“This powerful combination could finally enable the idea of the “connected trip,” acting as the glue that ties the disparate, disconnected elements of today’s itineraries together, enabling smart actions such as informing rideshares or hotels if a flight is delayed.”
I’ve been working in and around ‘travel ID wallets’ for over five years. Looking at everything from passports and boarding passes, to hotel door keys and Covid certificates, to loyalty and rewards.
And it’s one of the sectors I’m most excited about for Empowerment Tech.
Why?
Look across an entire trip, and you’ll see that it’s
Largely unregulated - mostly it’s about hospitality and experiences (aside from border crossing and biometrics)
Desperate for innovation - margins are typically razor thin
Full of friction - it’s repetitive, manual and search is broken
Massively complex - there are many moving parts, and it’s dynamic, where things change at short notice
A naturally fragmented market - by definition, I have to deal with multiple providers
One option to fix these things is to aggregate the market into a massive single platform.
Amazon-, Google- and Meta-for-travel. This is where the large travel platform players, including the Expedias and Booking.coms are headed.
But that’s Yet. Another. Travel. App.
You see, I already have one app for the trip booking, one for the taxi, one for the airline, another for the loyalty scheme, yet another for the country itself, a fancy new one for the hotel and another for tickets. It’s mad, it’s frustrating, and it’s full of waste.
And that’s before you think about the mess of travel provider portals, emails and pdfs.
Of course, the only logical point of integration for all this mess is the traveller themselves.
Which is why - surprise! - the sector has discovered travel wallets, and it’s a Big Deal.
Seamless travel. Connected travel. Secure travel.
Lower costs. More privacy. New revenue streams.
It’s literally a poster child moment for Empowerment Tech. With digital, portable and instantly verifiable credentials, data stores and Personal AI.
So what’s the snag?
The market is naturally and massively fragmented.
The very nature of the sector makes adoption incredibly difficult. So it’s hard for travellers to know which bits have been integrated with their wallet, which haven’t yet, and which never will be.
Oh, and the travel and hospitality sector is full of decades-old tech. And largely, sadly, is not very innovative.
So it’s going to take a while for things to snap into place. For wallets and credentials to be useful across the trip.
But surprise again! As we’ve been hearing every 6 seconds from the tech sector, AI agents will soon be able to step in to transform any existing customer process, touch point or experience.
Perhaps finally the individual can have a tool on their side to manage the travel mess?
I’m bullish.
Why?
Because customers need to handle both structured AND unstructured data. They need a way to deal with both verifiable data AND portable preferences. And they need a way to manage both planned interactions (check-in) AND unplanned ones (travel disruption).
Yes, I agree the ‘acceptance network’ for credentials isn’t there. Yet.
But AI agents won’t need to wait. And just as that AI-powered market disruption unfolds, there are multiple, massive-scale traveller wallet projects already underway. Where passengers and guests will be given a digital wallet for their trip.
Instantly verifiable data. Portable and secure data. Seamless and private data.
I like the headline chosen by Phocuswrite.
The New Travel Agents.
Because it’s worth repeating:
“This powerful combination could finally enable the idea of the “connected trip,” acting as the glue that ties the disparate, disconnected elements of today’s itineraries together”
It might not happen overnight, but I’m betting that travel and hospitality is going to be one of the huge areas to watch for digital wallets, Personal AI and EmpowermentTech.
Is LinkedIn a massive digital ID network hiding in plain sight?
Microsoft’s $26Bn purchase of LinkedIn in 2016 left many scratching their head.
What was the customer benefit? What was the product strategy? I suspect it’s been a happy accident that for the last few years, Microsoft has been working on (their own flavour of) verifiable credentials. Entra Verified ID.
So it was only a matter of time before their work on portable digital identity and LinkedIn collided.
If you haven’t already been following, it's worth checking out what LinkedIn has been up to with digital ID, including ‘Verified Workplace ID’.
This combination is possibly the biggest ID network hiding in plain sight.
I’ve long said that digital wallets have a distribution problem.
Now look again at Microsoft.
In larger economies, over a third of people work for big enterprises. And when you consider that Office 365 enjoys nearly 50% market share, the addressable market for a new portable employee ID becomes absolutely massive. (At last count, Microsoft has over 350M active users).
Suddenly, the position and power of LinkedIn takes on a whole new perspective. A whole new distribution strategy.
Now, Microsoft is a big beast. And a slow one. And when an elephant moves around in a small room, it will inevitably knock some things over.
But here’s what’s interesting.
The superpower of verifiable credentials is data portability. The ability to prove anything about you, to anyone else, anywhere.
Including beyond Microsoft.
Meaning that the whole ecosystem around verifiable data just expanded. And if the market-wide work on standards and interoperability continues, then potentially:
Anyone, anywhere should be able to verify workplace identities; and
Soon, other digital wallets should just work with the Microsoft Office suite.
Yes, this will mean verifiable work histories on LinkedIn (finally).
And yes, it will mean more trusted interactions with other professionals, for example when hiring or meeting new contacts at conferences.
But more broadly, this has the potential to mean a step change in the adoption - and visibility - of verifiable credentials and digital wallets.
MSFT VERIFIED WORKPLACE, THE WALLET DISTRIBUTION PROBLEM
The days of entering long forms at checkout are numbered
“The checkout page is dying”.
It’s another fresh perspective from Simon Taylor on how AI agents are going to collide with payments pretty dramatically.
He’s just laid out the four different ways it will happen.
Model 1: Human-in-the-loop
“Your AI finds a hotel, but freezes at checkout.
- "I found these options... please enter your card details."
- The magic breaks at payment - like early screen-scraping fintech.
- This is what OpenAI's Operator does today.
Model 2: Stored credentials with approval
- Your AI can access your saved payment methods but needs explicit permission.
- "I found a $199 room at the Hilton. Approve payment with card ending in 4242?"
- Better UX, but still requires human intervention for every transaction.
Model 3: Virtual cards with controls
- Your AI has a payment method with defined limits.
- "I've booked your room using a virtual card within your $250 budget."
- Stripe is already enabling this flow
Model 4: Autonomous wallet
- Your AI controls a programmable wallet (think stablecoins).
- No checkout flow. No card details. Just seamless transactions.
- We have a lot to figure out before this is possible (e.g. fraud? wallets?)
This, my friends, is the birth of A-Commerce.
And look closely, and you’ll notice that digital identity flows through each. So let’s take a look at the Empowerment Tech angle.
1. Human-in-the-loop
AI uses the user’s existing identity information and payment details. The human still has to prove it’s them.
A good start, though it will only work for ‘Guest Checkout.’ If you want to use your existing account, you’ll need to log in and authenticate.
My guess is that merchants and service providers are going to be unhappy about customers sharing their login and ID data with 3rd parties for that access.
It caused an enormous headache for the banks themselves, who ended up creating open banking for this reason.
2. Stored credentials with approval
This is where digital wallets and verifiable credentials enter the room. We can head towards one-tap checkout and a breeze of a booking flow, but with added spice from ‘proof of X’ (student, employee, loyalty etc.).
This is likely the first way that customers will experience AI-enabled payments and ID, because it’ll give them a sense of control and transparency. And it’s the model that almost all of today’s Decentralised Identity (wallet) providers have gone for.
It’s precisely where we are today with driverless vehicles. And why we still need a steering wheel.
3. Virtual cards with controls
Now the customer’s identity - the digital wallet and verifiable credentials - becomes automated.
That virtual card Simon describes from Stripe with $250 on it can also come from a digital identity wallet that can also prove I’m entitled to a 20% discount.
This is the interesting part, where not only the payment instruction can be taken, but identity data can be shared and verified instantly in the same transaction.
Remember, the digital wallet will audit every payment and every data-sharing transaction. Meaning we can see what data has been shared with whom, when, why and where. And we can revoke access where relevant (which is going to be critical for trust and auditing).
4. Autonomous wallet
This is the Personal AI vision, with Embedded Identity. Where my AI can act on my behalf autonomously.
How?
Because my AI Agent will have its own wallet
Be able to interact with my wallet
What does that mean? It means that I can give my AI agent its own identity credentials. And it can prove that it’s working for me.
It follows a well-established model for accountability that we already use every day. It’s called Delegated Authority.
Accountants use it to file taxes on behalf of their clients. And Executive Assistants use it to book stuff on behalf of their boss.
Without a Delegated Authority flow, and critically without proof of delegation, fraud will explode.
The cost of deploying an AI model is already nearly free. And so the cost of deploying fraudulent AI is trending to zero. Meaning it won’t just be MY bot showing up at the door of businesses. It’s going to be every customer, their own AI, plus millions of MalBots trying to pretend to be me.
Know Your Agent (h/t Jelena Hoffart at Mastercard for that one) is going to be one of the most important shifts we’ve seen since securing payments on the web full stop.
I really like Simon’s four payments model. Because it helps us to break out the identity disruption coming.
With credentials. With wallets. And with delegated authority.
Is the checkout page dead? Maybe.
But the days of entering long forms to enter your details and payment information are certainly numbered.
OTHER THINGS
There are far too many interesting and important Customer Futures things to include this week.
So here are some more links to chew on:
Post: Why you (probably) won't be able to pay with the EU Digital Identity wallet anytime soon READ
Article: 1,000 autonomous AI agents in Minecraft developed their own government, culture, and economy READ
Idea: What if AI becomes as ubiquitous as the internet, but runs locally and transparently on our devices? WATCH
Article: Simpler, Better, Faster, Colder: How AI is Changing Customer Experience READ
News: The latest EU Digital Identity Wallet ‘Architecture and Reference Framework’ (ARF) v1.6 is out READ
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.
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