Complementary

Complementary! It’s a brief but precise assurance of Bankers Association of the Philippines (BAP) Managing Director Ben P. Castillo on the Philippine Identification System Act (Phil-ID), the law that, after several years of attempts, will finally establish the country’s single national identification system and the planned digitalbanking ID of the BAP.

Mr. Ben is at the helm of the digital banking ID, a pet project of BDO Universal Bank President/Chief Executive Officer and current BAP President Nestor V. Tan.

“We welcome the law. The BAP supports this strategic move of the government,” he said. However, Mr, Ben was quick to point out that BAP has no intention of “replicating, neither duplicating the national ID.” He believed, though that both will have the same reliability and provide ease and comfort to the general banking public.

Unlike the national ID, the BAP will be not be issuing a tangible one that will contain the essential information of an individual such full name, the bearer’s identification system number, date of birth, address, and facial image and biometric features like fingerprints.

The ID is not in the normal, usual context. Tapping cutting-edge, dynamic information technology, BAP, instead, is embarking on a concept of digital ID using the methodology “self-sovereign ID,” anchored on the customer’s having control of his personal information/ data and whom he would like to share it with.

Under the distributed ledger technology, BAP will be “building a platform” that would allow its 42-member banks, financial institutions to access the information only upon the mandate of the customers. The structure centers on member-financial institutions/banks uploading the information of its customers into the infrastructure platform for easy identification, to make business transactions more comfortable and easier. Salient biometric features, that include facial image, will be contained in the digital banking iD. The data, though, will be an exclusive domain of the bank where the customer has relationship.

There is no whimsical sharing. “Your privacy is protected,” Mr. Ben said.

In the future, should the customer intend to make a separate and distinct transaction with another member bank, the individual may provide his data/ information already kept with his first bank without the redundancy of filing another info-sheet. This way, service will be more efficient and faster. Aside from being compliant with the ‘KYC” (know your customer) requirement of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the system addresses repetitiveness, re-handling, and incremental administrative costs. Thus, more cost-effective. It will be a game changer in the domestic banking arena.

With the appropriate technology platform in place, BAP is into the second phase of the project, which this corner unveiled in November last year. “With the proof of the concept completed, we are now on the second stage, the usage to make sure that all the banking policies are addressed.”

If all systems go, the “selfsovereign” digital ID will be rolled out before the year ends. For now, the idea is to keep the use of the “self-sovereign ID” among its members. This early, though, there are already plans to expand the usage of the digital ID platform to include establishments and service-oriented outlets, We’ll keep you posted. Talk back to me at sionil731@gmail.com