Launched in partnership with Canada’s major financial institutions in 2019, Verified.Me’s digital identity authentication and verification service last week celebrated one full year of operations.
SecureKey, creators of the network, is built on the goal of simplifying consumer access to online services and applications in a secure way. Verified.Me uses blockchain technology to securely and privately transfer people’s personal information to trusted network participants, giving them easy access to important services such as banking.
The novel coronavirus outbreak has led to a spike in the platform’s usage, according to Greg Wolfond, chief executive officer of SecureKey.
“I think what happened with the COVID crisis is that people realized they have to get going with digital faster, and the need for me to be able to prove who I am remotely without having to get really close, physical, is even more important now when I don’t feel comfortable handing over documents to someone I don’t know, getting in a car with someone I don’t know. The kind of things that we do are more and more relevant and we’re busy as heck delivering more and more solutions on top of that,” Wolfond told the publication.
The service that has the most volume of users amid COVID-19 is the SecureKey Concierge Service, an authentication network for connecting people to critical online services, which went from about 100 transactions a second to 800 transactions per second through the crisis, Wolfond told the publication.
“This was a huge win for everyone because it worked, and kept going, but a huge effort on the team to make sure it’s up and running through this whole crisis. Kudos to the government for the work that they did, and our team for the part that they played,” Wolfond added.
Over the past year, Verified.Me expanded into the insurance, financial services and benefits space when Sun Life Financial joined as an early adopter. The partnership ecosystem of the company’s digital identity network also comprises companies from the legal and healthcare space. It recently also ramped up its physical ID verification with the technology company Onfido, with the aim of paving the way for strong, secure and seamless government-issued ID proofing in the future.
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Securekey’s early success in the blockchain space is a rarity in Canada. Many applications of blockchain, and particularly those outside of financial applications, are still in proof-of-concept phases in Canada, according to a report from the Information and Communications Technology Council. This is in line with global estimates stating that only 15 per cent of organizations would characterize their blockchain applications as “live.”
“Finance and fintech-related use cases are widely perceived as the most mature for blockchain in Canada, with emerging applications in the supply chain, identity, and other fields are picking up steam,” the report reads.
