This week’s episode I’m honored to speak with world renowned keynote speaker, author, and global advisor and investor in financial services & identity, David G.W. Birch.
David is a recognized thought leader and top voice in digital identity and digital money. His book, "Identity is the New Money", published in 2014 is considered to be the pioneering perspective on identity as the economic enabler for the digital economy.
We dive into David’s origin story and how his early career as a global consultant influenced his perspective on digital identity and digital money. We discuss his numerous books as he shares his world perspective on the future of the digital economy.
RESOURCES:
Connecting with David Birch
David Birch’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgwbirch/
David Birch’s website: https://dgwbirch.com/
David Birch’s Substack:
Companies & Resources Discussed
Books published by Dave include The Currency Cold War and Identity is the New Money.
Companies and organizations with which Dave Birch is affiliated with include:
15Mb Ltd. is a consultancy under which David Birch, Principal, delivers board-level advice and global commentary on digital financial services.
Consult Hyperion provides expert advisory, technical consulting, software development and certification services to organizations across the globe.
Digiseq Limited is a UK-based tech company that enables wearable contactless payments.
Møller Institute at Churchill College provides space and context for the development of current and future leaders in government, industry, academia and civil society, through a bespoke approach to leadership, strategy and innovation.
Logica, now CGI, is among the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world.
Deepfake Summit brings together a collaborative cohort of leading technologists, academics, policymakers, and industry executives to foster the responsible development and use of deepfake technology.
Wired article by Dave Birch: “Your robot needs a passport” December 18, 2018.
Pan-Canadian Trust Framework represents a diversity of public and private sector stakeholders who collaborate to deliver resources that help to solve and secure identity including: validated use cases, standards, model agreements, international alignments, and informative policy development recommendations.
Interac is an Australian-owned digital identity solution which makes it easier for customers to verify who they are, using organizations they already trust.
ConnectID is an Australian-owned digital identity solution which makes it easier for customers to verify who they are, using organizations they already trust.
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Survey and Diary of Consumer Payment Choice creates a comprehensive picture of US consumers' payment preferences and behavior.
Monzo founded in the UK in 2015, Monzo's mission is to make money work for everyone. By focusing on solving people's actual problems, rather than selling financial products, they want to put people back in control of their finances.
ISO/IEC TS 18013-7 (Part 7: Mobile driving license (mDL) add-on functions)
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Steve Craig: Welcome to the PEAK IDV EXECUTIVE SERIES video podcast, where I speak with executives, leaders, founders, and change makers in the digital identity space. I'm your host, Steve Craig, Founder and Chief Enablement Officer for PEAK IDV. For our audience, this is a video first series, so if you're enjoying the audio version, please check out the video recording on executiveseries.peakidv.com, where you can watch the full episode, read the transcript, and access any of the resources or links from today's conversation. This week, I'm thrilled to be speaking with world renowned keynote speaker, author and global advisor, and investor in financial services and identity David GW Birch.
David is a recognized thought leader and top voice in digital identity and digital money. His book Identity is the New Money published in 2014 is considered to be the pioneering perspective on identity as the economic enabler for the digital economy. Today, he is principal at 15MB LTD his advisory practice and serves as global brand ambassador for Consult Hyperion, the secure electronic transactions consultancy he helped found in 1986.
He's also non-executive chairman of Digiseq Ltd. and serves in a number of other board level advisory roles with companies in Europe and North America. He holds a number of academic positions, including senior research fellow at King's College business school in London and is associate at the Møller Center, the Churchill College in Cambridge.
I've been following David's work in identity for my entire time in this field. And it's a true honor to be speaking with him today. Mr. Birch welcome, thank you for making the time to be on the podcast.
Dave Birch: That's a very kind introduction, Steve. Thank you very much. Yeah. It's a pleasure to be here.
Steve: It's amazing background. Let's jump in. I think everyone who's watching this or listening to this knows who you are through your thought leadership work, but I'd love to hear more about the work you do in your advisory 15MB LTD. Hopefully that's right. 15 MB?
Dave: Well, it's mostly-- I mean, obviously there's the speaking and writing that I do, but the advisory work is mostly actually workshops at the moment. Because I think that in the old days you used to do strategies. You know, you periodically revise these strategies, but the way things are now, people are more interested in scenario planning, finding new ways to align business and technology strategy.
And it's very enjoyable work actually. So I do a lot of work on technology trends and how to get businesses to understand how to take advantage of those trends. And, yeah, I'm fortunate that I get a global perspective on this, which I hope is useful to people.
Steve: That's great. When I was reading the website and preparing for this conversation, I hadn't known a lot about your advisory.
I see that you work with the large global banks, financial services, and telecommunications providers. What are the trends right now that the executives and the boards are coming to you for guidance on?
Dave: I mean, I would say, if you look at the work, I was-- I mean, I'll just pick work that I was doing last week, because that's what's in my head right now. I mean, there-- and this is to do with-- this is for banks, not to businesses in general, but for banks. By far, the biggest priority is artificial intelligence and how to develop an appropriate strategy towards artificial intelligence. And, I did-- so, I wrote a piece for Wired a few years ago, which I thought was very futuristic. And I said-- because I'd been looking at AI in, you know, that context-- and I said, you know, “the things that banks want to do with this…” I just read a thing in the FT today about Klarna using AI to reduce their number of staff. Like, it's not that interesting, like, you know, having fewer people in the--, I mean, it's great, you know, make more money and whatever, but it's not interesting.
And I said, I thought, you know, the revolution in financial services, retail financial services is about customers getting AI. It's not about banks getting AI and trying to work out how to respond to your customers suddenly getting massively smarter in a relatively short time is surprisingly difficult and surprisingly interesting as well.
So, it used to be… AI is the number one. Now of course that spills over into digital identity because now you have to start having strategies towards the identities of bots. That takes us into proof of personhood, which I've always been very interested in. As well as, you know, the overall kind of trust structures and frameworks.
That takes you into digital assets and tokenization. I'm very interested in the meta. I get, you know, a lot of people haven't really sort of taken on board the change that's coming with the Metaverse. They played around with those kind of Facebook bubble people like, “well, this sucks.” And then they think nothing's happening.
That's wrong, because the next generation of consumers are already there. And I've also just recently been involved in helping to put together a post quantum security strategy for somebody in the identity space as well. So, you know, interesting, quite varied, you know, it's not a bad time to be in identity, to be honest, Steve.
Steve: Yeah, there's definitely a mind map from AI to digital identity, to the Metaverse. All these things are interconnected [Dave: They really are] and most definitely want to dive into those in this conversation today. Before we go further into digital identity, it'd be great to go back in time to look at your personal origin story.
One of the things I do in this series is help people get to know the leaders and the thought leaders. Love to go back to 1977. This is when you're at the University of Southampton studying physics. Tell me about that, Dave, what drove your interest in physics?
Dave: Well, I was always-- from when I was a little kid, I was always very interested in science.
And the more I learned about science, the more I realized I wanted to study physics. I wanted to know how things worked ultimately. And, at the time, what I thought was the most interesting area in physics was lasers. And, Southampton had a very, very-- in fact it still does-- had a very strong laser optoelectronics research base.
And so I decided to go there and-- which was great because I absolutely loved it there. It's a fantastic university and I had a great time there. Unfortunately, it turned out I wasn't that good at physics, which is a bit of a drawback if you're, you know, looking for that as a career. I had real problems with, you know, when you have to picture the cat falling and you have to work out, “oh you think of it as three cylinders and you've got an elephant of negligible mass on an infinitely extensible string and I don't.” But I was good at math and so I could shut up and calculate.
So being good at math got me through. But of course, you know, you pretty soon realize you're not going to be, you know, one of the top physicists at CERN, so you have to start thinking about the job and in those days, you know, computers were the obvious way to go. And so, I was good at it. So, yeah, so I started off studying physics, graduated and then went straight into IT.
Steve: Very cool. Looking at the time horizon, 1977, another big thing happened. The first Star Wars movie, May ‘77. Did you happen to see that over summer? And you're like, “this is going to be my focus.”
Dave: My memory is to further-- I know that annoys people, but I'm not that fond of Star Wars. To me, it's just-- you know, what, to me, was much more in 1979 when Alien came out, that was that, for me-- that was the definitive movie of the future by, you know… And I just went to see Romulus at the IMAX a couple of nights ago and loved it. So I, I'm still in that sort of mode, you know?
Steve: Right. Well, I have not seen that. Well, let's talk about that later in the episode today. No spoilers, but I want to get your opinion on something related to the Alien movies. So you finish school, you graduate, and then you set off into the world following your career path. I see you joined a consulting firm, Logica and then…
Dave: Yeah, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And so I thought-- and I didn't even really know what consultancy was, but you know, in those days, companies used to come around to the campus. And they would hire a pub for the night and give you free beer if you, you know-- in those days it was like Burroughs, Honeywell, IBM.
And I happened to go with a-- I didn't know why, but I happened to go to one for a consulting company. And the thing that sticks in my mind is that they said, “well, you know, if you join us, you get to travel.” And I really wanted to travel. So, yeah, so I found myself in consultancy and I thought, “well, I'll do consultancy for a couple of years until I find out what I'm really good at and then I'll…” but it turned out I was okay at consultancy and I liked traveling and meeting new people.
So, yeah, it was a, you know, it was a fantastic decision. I had a wonderful time. Wonderful time.
Steve: I believe they still set up booths at universities to recruit. It's been a while since I've been there, but they have jobs or credit card applications, you get to pick which one your paths are going to go down.
Well Looking at your Logica background, I saw something really interesting that you made the cover of the company's annual report in the first year
Dave: You have been reading all the stuff online, yeah, very weird thing. So the company for their annual report they decide-- they commissioned an oil painter and they basically, they had people going around taking pictures and then the pictures they liked, they would give to the painter and then he would do like an oil painting version of it.
And that was what would go in the report. And they-- I guess they were trying to sort of shift the image of, you know, consulting and-- but yeah, I'm standing on the stairs wearing jeans and an old combat jacket, smoking a cigarette, if you can believe it, this is in 1980. And talking to a colleague of mine on the stairs and they decided that would be the picture for the inside back cover of the annual report. I treasure that picture still, to be honest. So, yeah.
Steve: Yeah. I think that when they were trying to plan that cover, they were thinking we need to recruit younger. We need like a Mick Jagger type or maybe Paul McCartney on the cover and they-- David Birch will do.
Dave: I don't know about-- I don't know about Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney, but yeah, somebody wearing a combat jacket and smoking a cigarette was just what they were looking for.
Steve: Right. Well, you were there six years, so that's quite a good run to be doing consulting. Where did you travel and what were your engagements like?
Dave: Yeah. Well, I mean, I found myself working on secure communications, which I really liked. And obviously a lot of that was for the military.
And then, you know, because I wanted to travel, I lived in Indonesia, in the Netherlands, in the US a couple of times. So I got to travel around and work on interesting projects. I'm so grateful to the company for that time. I really, I learned an amazing amount.
Steve: Well, it sounds like an ideal time to be traveling young, fresh out of school, different perspectives, different cultures. But you left, and I see 1986, just a few years after graduating and doing your Logica run, you helped found, Consult Hyperion?
Dave: Yeah, so some colleagues said, actually we've got an idea for, you know, for forming our own consulting company. Would you be interested in doing that? And I moved back to the UK at the time to join them and help get it underway. And I was like, “we'll see how this goes for a couple of years.” And, you know, nearly 40 years later, I'm still there. So it kind of worked out okay.
Steve: Curious about the origin of the name, pretty unique, was that always the name or something else?
Dave: Oh, we spent ages trying to do like you always do with-- because in those days, domain names weren't a concern. You just have to try and think of a good name. And I mean, it's a bit hubris. I mean, Hyperion was the name of one of the Titans in Greek mythology. Who, you know, rose up against their parents. And so we thought that would be a good name for an upstart consulting company. And then a few years later, we had a brand guy look at it.
And, actually he came up with the idea of Consult Hyperion, you know, to like put the active verb in, which is interesting because, you know, at the time everyone else was, you know, you would have like systems or software or whatever, but not consult or you would say like, so and so consulting. It was novel at the time and, of course, and then we ended up getting the domain name CHYP, which was great. So it'll works out.
Steve: I always find it fascinating how those early businesses come together and the names, and sometimes they don't stick, but sometimes they endure 40 years; like you said, that's…
Dave: Yeah, I'm very proud of it.
Steve: Let's catch up with today and let's start to move towards some of the digital identity topics. We're recording this at the end of August in 2024. It's almost a half century from your time there in Southampton. You just did a world tour. You just had another one of your famous global roadshows.
Where have you been traveling the last couple months? What were your engagements looking like?
Dave: The last couple of months was US, I don't know, where did I go? I went-- Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, back to Australia, Austria, then I'm back here. And then week after next it's US again, then, Netherlands, then Paris. And then a bit later in the month, it's Chicago. And then Campala. So it's quite a, I'm getting a bit too old for this to be completely honest, but I like meeting new people. You know that when you travel for these things, you always meet new people and people are interesting. And so that, you know, that provides the energy.
Steve: Is it challenging keeping up with what city you're in or what time zone? Like, how do you maintain sanity?
Dave: That happened to me a few years ago, but I joked about it with other people, actually, for a reason. I can remember a few years ago-- I can't remember 10 years ago. But a few years ago, I remember I was walking through the airport, landed in London and I'm walking through and I got stopped by a customs officer and he said, “you know, excuse me, sir, where have you just come from?”
And I was like, “honestly, I don't know. I couldn't tell you.” I had to actually-- think and when I was-- I went, “it was Munich, no, I wasn't in Munich.” And that was like-- that was the point when I realized I probably, you know, I've probably gone a bit too far. I can't decide whether my airline status is a, you know, a badge of honor over a lifetime spent in the service of the British industry or just a tragic emblem of a wasted life. I honestly can't make my mind up. But, yeah, it's been a while since that happened.
Steve: Well, let's get down to business, Dave, we've kind of set the foundation for your background, what you've been up to lately. I want to go into your book, Identity is the New Money. It's now 10 years old. And in this book, you talk about the convergence of money and identity, and you make predictions in this 10 years ago. I'm curious what predictions you made that have come to fruition. And which you feel are maybe still evolving in the digital identity landscape.
Dave: Well, I mean, the book was-- I mean, I'm very proud of it now. I mean, looking back on it now-- I mean, at the time I thought I was just writing down stuff that sort of everybody knew kind of but a couple of very important people have persuaded me to actually, you know, get it down on paper. Looking back on it now, I feel quite proud of, you know, sort of seeing this turning point. And it came about because a lot of the-- I know I was doing a lot of work in payments and a lot of the problems you come across after a while you begin to realize these aren't really payments problems. These are actually identity problems.
And in fact, I found a quote a few years ago, I was doing something else. I found a quote from Jack Dorsey from around about the same time, which I didn't know about at the time. I saw a quote from Jack Dorsey who said, “you know, this isn't about payments. This is about identity.” And he's a billionaire, so you should probably listen to him about this actually.
And so I wrote the book. I was excited to have my first book published and I mean, even more excited when, you know, the first people started buying it. I mean, people still buy it today, which is-- just blows me away. It's fantastic, you know? But looking back on it now, I think what I got right was this. We have to change our view from digitizing identity and sort of making electronic representations of offline identity. And we need to start thinking about digital identity. In other words, how should identity work in this sort of new online world? The way that digital identity works you know, I'm talking about credentials and all this kind of thing, is just fundamentally different to the way digitized identity works. And I think I was right about that. This shift to sort of credentials based transactions. And I guess in the background, I mean, there's a couple of things I got right about mobile and stuff like that. But yeah, the core thing was seeing that kind of shift, you know?
A good friend of mine just started a new job a couple of months ago in the identity space. And I almost-- he sent me a picture of his induction pack at this new-- I won't say the company-- but you know, there was like an employee handbook and there's like some vouchers for something. And a map of the campus and a copy of my book. And I, yeah, I almost cried.
Steve: Oh, wow. Well, I certainly hope people who are watching and listening to this will seek out your book if they have not already read it or heard of it. When you think about the changing landscape of digital identity across the world, we just covered how much you travel and frequently in one country, then the next, then the next, are there certain countries that are more closer to the vision that you laid out in that book versus others? How do you see the world when you are in the US and then next thing you know, you…
Dave: You can see the world in-- I mean I know that this is a kind of super high level and inappropriate kind of classification, but broadly you can see a few models evolving.
There's, you know, what you call like the sort of the-- this sort of Asian model. This was centralized, you know, Aadhaar and China and so on. So you got this very centralized model, which in some countries is the only way to get people, you know, real inclusion and get them out of poverty-- is not right for us, but it worked for them.
You can see what you might call the Scandinavian model, the sort of bank-centric model. And in, you know, in Sweden and Denmark and Finland and so on-- Norway, I mean. And then you can see the sort of European model, but I hesitate to call it the Napoleonic model, but the sort of government centric, semi-distributed model.
You see what's going on with the European Digital Identity Wallet and things like that. And then you see the sort of what you might call the Anglo Saxon model, the kind of UK and the US, to some extent Australia, and where there's an aversion to any kind of centralized government identity, and we really want very different solutions for these kind of things.
You have what-- I don't know if it's the right word anymore, but I tend to think of it as the Commonwealth model that you see emerging out of Canada and Australia, now in New Zealand. Where the government defines the framework, but not the-- not necessarily the content. I mean, the UK is going in that direction as well now. And I think that's quite promising.
So if I had to pick one country, I think that's quite hard, but the countries I'm most interested in at the moment are probably Canada, where you have the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework and you have, you know, Interac Verified in the market. In Australia where you've got ConnectID you can-- again, you've got a framework in place and you've got Connect ID live.
Probably one thing that really interests me is New Zealand because New Zealand is slightly different from the others because in New Zealand, the framework has a statutory footing, which is, you know, it doesn't in other countries. So I'm curious about what happens there.
So-- and then-- you know, but you can learn from anywhere, you know, you see what's going on with identity cards anywhere from Estonia to Nigeria to, I mean, you can learn from everywhere. It doesn't mean you want to copy it, but you can learn from it.
Steve: What do you think is driving those different models? Is it the heritage and the culture of the country? Is it political power? Like, which type of political party is running it? What is creating such a different landscape, in your opinion?
Dave: It’s very cultural. I would say cultural, you know, rather than political. I mean, you know, it wouldn't matter which government was in power in the UK. You're not going to have an identity card. People just don't want an identity card. It's not going to happen. And that's for deep seated cultural reasons. It's not for sort of political reasons.
So I think that those kinds of things are invariant and, you know, rather than argue with people about it. I mean, I don't want an ID card. I mean, I'm as pro digital identity as you can get. I don't want everybody to have an identity card. I want an infrastructure that's based on, you know, like we said, you know, reputation, credentials, not based on kind of identification, but based on authorization, not who are you, but what are you allowed to do?
You know, we all talk about the simplistic example between telling the bar your date of birth and telling the bar you're over 18. But I think that's really important. And in an interconnected world where everything's online, we have to build the security and privacy levels into the infrastructure, not just have some infrastructure and hope those things drop on top of it. So yeah, you, there's loads of places to learn from Steve, lots of different lessons.
Steve: Do you think perhaps the incentives when you're looking at, you know, private-public partnership, the incentives have to be more fully aligned, or is it really about the culture nominating regulation and that regulation being more the enforcement mechanism?
Dave: I think, you know, the fact is regulation is the kind of boundary that shapes, you know, what we can do. In terms of the public-private partnership, that's a very interesting question, you know, do you need that sort of--, well, you don't need it, I mean, you could easily have the government just--, well, like in India, you can have the government just issue the identities and everybody has to use them.
I mean, I think in our-- we probably do want more of a public-private partnership. I would like it if I could take the identity from my bank and my airline could understand it. I would like it if they could interoperate in some way. I'm not sure if I want one identity that I use at the bank and the airline everywhere else. That doesn't seem quite right to me, but, you know, all things considered, I think if we shift in that direction, where transactions are enabled on the basis of reputation, rather than identification, we'll take a big step forward to getting more security and more privacy.
Steve: In your book, you argue that cash will be redundant, that digital currencies will replace them. And certainly in the last 10 years, globally, we've seen more use of credit cards and contactless. And, a lot of the currency is still represented in your local-- whether it's the dollar or the euro or the pound, but how do you see that evolving, further in the context of Digital ID, when we're stuck in these physical plastic cards? We're not moving to this credentialed world. Do you feel that it's…?
Dave: I think that's not-- I don't think that's quite accurate. I don't characterize it like that, Steve. If you look at the sort of gross global statistics, wallets are already the dominant payment mechanism globally. I mean, if you-- if we, you know, we think like if you're thinking from a US perspective where I was just reading the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta payment survey earlier on, and I don't have it in front of me so I can't remember the-- but I think, you know, you're looking at a situation where 99 percent of Americans have a payment card of some kind, you know. And those cards are gradually vanishing inside--
I think 75 percent of Americans use some form of mobile wallet. I was reading this statistic, one in five customers of this bank no longer bother applying for the physical card. They just get the card downloaded. They never get the physical card. And I'm telling--, I'm reading the-- it was in the Economist, I don't remember where it was, I'm reading this and the guy opposite me is like, “Oh my God, I forgot to get my card.”
And it turns out he'd applied for a bank-- I can't remember whether it was Monzo or Star…, one of the online banks. And he'd been meaning to apply for a card, but just kept forgetting about it because he downloaded it to his phone and that worked absolutely fine. So the cards are disappearing. I think the issue about cash is probably-- you know, I get into horrible arguments with people about this-- and I don't want to restart any of those arguments, but there's an assumption that cash is like a kind of inclusion. I don't know that it's good for people that… But the thing is people who are trapped in a cash economy are the people who pay the highest prices for everything. They're the people that get shaken…. Like it's just basically if I'm walking-- actually happened to me when my phone got stolen-- you know, if I'm walking down the street and my cards get stolen, I don't really care. It's a hassle, but it's not my problem, it's the bank's problem. You know, if I'm walking down the street and my money gets stolen, that's end of-- I mean, I don't get it back. You know, it's people who have cash that, you know, have it stolen and lost and so on. So I don't like that sort of view that if you, if you think cashless is good, then you're Hitler essentially, which is the kind of view you get-- or mad, which is the other thing you get on LinkedIn all the time.
But what I would say is we need to have a strategy for it. I think one of the problems that you see in countries where cash is just simply allowed to wilt away is you end up with marginalized and excluded groups who are underserved in that new environment and that's a bad thing. We don't want that to happen.
So if you just let cashlessness happen, like in Sweden or somewhere, you know, you don't, get the right results. We need an active strategy to get the inclusion and deliver the services that the citizens need to improve their overall financial health. So yeah, I said it's the wrong topic to get me and I could talk about it for hours.
Steve: No, I'd love to go deeper into this topic because it does connect to the identity topic. I've got many friends now that are from Europe or live in the UK and when they come here to visit, one of the surprising things for them, if they don't spend a lot of time in the States is the request to put your card in the black envelope and they run off with it and they think, “well, bring me the terminal so I can Apple Pay or bring me the terminal so I can pay with Google.” And that becomes a cultural shock over and over again. Even recently...
Dave: The three things-- I mean, I traveled to the US a lot-- obviously the three things that stand out to me in the US is-- I still think it's funny-- I've done this for years, I mean, it's stupid and juvenile and whatever. But years ago, I just made the point that the signatures are irrelevant, they don't matter. And so I started signing all of my credit card transactions, Sergio Aguero, cause he was my favorite striker at Manchester City in those days. And I just can't-- I can't stop. I just carry on doing it all the time. It's the only place this happens is the US nowhere else do they, put in the chip, make you put in the pin, then make you sign the signature as well, or tap it and do the signature. It’s only in the US.
So the first thing is the signatures. The second thing is cash. I go to New York and I notice, like-- and this has happened more than once, where you go into a restaurant, you know, order some food, blah, blah, blah. Comes to the end, you put down a card, they say “we’re cash only, you didn't see the sign with cash only.” Like, “why you cash only,” you know, and it turns out there's a law that says businesses have to take cash, which is really annoying. And actually what businesses have done in response to that law is, I'm sure you well know, is they've put the reverse ATMs in. So you put the cash into the machine. The machine gives you a plastic card with that value on it, which you then go and use it on accounts to pay. I mean, like this doesn't make any sense at all. And things are about to get even more complicated because-- is it Illinois where they're passing a law that you can't charge interchange on the tips or something? I mean, it's all sorts of weird things going on. So it's odd from that point of view.
The third thing, of course, is always, which is even when I lived in the States, all those years ago, was baffling to me, was people using checks all the time for everything. I saw a thing in the paper-- I think you may have turned a corner, because I saw that Target has stopped accepting checks. And I think that might be what economists call a weak signal for change. So looking back, that's going to be a turning point in American history, the day that Target stopped taking checks. It's probably like the day when Richard Nixon stopped converting US dollars into gold, 1971. You know, the day Target started-- stopped accepting checks is probably a day like that, I think.
Steve: There are businesses just in the last few years with inflation kicking up that are giving cash discounts. Gas stations here, petrol stations in the US there is a different price if you walk in and pay with cash, just so those businesses could save. There are different sides, it was-- some people believe that, yes, you need to enable cash because it is inclusive, but then there are others that feel they're better off with those digital mechanisms. I have a friend who lives in the States and we did a Mexico trip and he doesn't carry a credit card. He has a debit card connected to a checking account, but overseas is very challenging. He has to convert his dollars to Pesos to transact because his debit card won't work. Whereas if you had a credit card-- so I think there's still a lot of nuances.
Where I was going with this question connected to identity, though, is I see a similarity with the evolution of payments where there's more and more choice. People could pay with Apple Pay, they could pay with a credit card, there’s still cash, but identity is still, it's often still the physical card, it's the physical passport. Even though there has been movements towards accepting that credential, like with what Apple has for the TSA now. What do you think is preventing that from having the same accelerated innovation as we've seen with cashless?
Dave: Actually, I think that innovation is beginning to accelerate, I think, you know, mobile driving licenses. I'm not sure it's a perfect analogy, but I remember many years ago, we worked on-- because I'm here, we worked on the first, what they call open loop transit system. So we were lucky enough to be chosen by Transport for London to help them with their huge project, to stop using transit cards and let people just use their credit cards instead.
Very successful project, by the way. So people had contactless cards, but they didn't really use them. Like if you don't know what contactless is, you just-- you get sent a card, which has a funny symbol on it and a letter from the bank, which you'll probably don't read, which says, “by the way, you can just tap this on things now” you don't need it anymore.
So people had the cards, but they just didn't use them. When you could pay on the bus, that was a turning point. You know, people would like, they forgot to top up their transit card or they'd forgotten their transit card. And they think, “Oh, I think I saw something that's, I'm sure I saw something on TV the other day. I can use my visa card on the bus now.” And they tap it and it works. And so then they tap it to get a cup of coffee and then they tap it to pay their groceries and then… So transit was a, you know, if you read histories of the take-up of contactless transit was really important. I wonder if the mobile driving license isn't going to be a bit like this on the identity side of things.
Because as people get used to using their mobile driving licenses, by the way, when I was in Australia last week, I saw-- you know, I don't want to get boring into the technicalities of things, but Part 5 of the ISO standard, the mDL standard allows you to issue identification documents that aren't driving licenses.
So companies could issue employee credentials using that same format, for example, or, you know, football clubs could issue fan passes, you know, using that same, that same standard. Part 7 of that standard, which is now in draft, is to use those online. And I've already seen demos of people who've implemented the Part 7 of the standards so that you can use a driving license to prove your age to something online. It all works.
So I wonder if like-- it is-- you know, we spend a lot of time looking at all sorts of other, but maybe it's the mundane, maybe like people just get used to using their driving license with the TSA. And then one day they're just asked when they log into Netflix, you've got to prove you're over 18, “By the way, you can do this if you've got your driving license.” You know, I wonder, I really do think things are changing because of the driving license.
Steve: To your earlier point about this process of we just try to replicate what we've done in the physical world to the digital world. A lot of identity verification in this last decade has been centered around that physical credential, taking a picture of it…
Dave: Well, but it's happened to me. I mean, I don't want to-- but this happened to me at a company the other day. So I go to the desk and the guy says, “you have to show us my ID.” And the only ID I have is my passport. And I said, “I'm uncomfortable with people taking copies.” And he said, “no, we're not going to take a copy. We're just going to look at it.” So I showed him my passport and he says, “okay, you can come into the building.” Absolute farce. I wasn't showing the passport to some Mossad trained anti-counterfeit document detecting, you know, autistic genius who could immediately see, “Oh, wait a minute, that's, you know, they have a rabbit on the hologram of the British passport and that's a hare. You can't fool me.” I mean like, come on, it's, you know, it's the minimum wage guy at the desk who just looks at the book. He doesn't know if it's a real passport or not, the whole thing is ridiculous. Now, if I had to tap to get in, the system would immediately know whether it was real or not. Because they check the digital signatures and it wouldn't have to give up, you know, information that's not relevant to the transaction.
So I think actually digital identity is a much better solution than physical identity in all of these cases. And actually, you know-- I mean,-- I know it sounds a bit flippant, but I mean, there are a couple of big use cases for that sort of thing. Like PornHub, for example, where once people use it for that, like, because you've got to prove you're over 18, I mean, I don't know how many people want to present their passport to prove they're over 18 to PornHub, but you know, I mean, they can influence it properly using verifiable credentials.
But the thing is, once people get used to using it, then they'll start using it everywhere. And so, yeah, I think that is changing. Also, remember, because Apple are very, very clever. And because Apple have a strategy, Apple have said that opening up the secure enclave on the iPhone, it's going to be free for governments, but not for businesses.
That means the passports and driving licenses will all head into the Apple wallet and the Android wallet, of course, because they have the secure enclave in Android phones as well. So, you know, if you get used to your passport, your driving license heading in there, you know, I mean, it's-- I mean, we used to joke about it in the old days that that wouldn't work because nobody in America had a passport. But I think over half of Americans have a passport now, don't they? So passports and driving licenses give you coverage of a lot of the country.
Steve: The passport rate in the US has most definitely been on the rise given the last few years. I think post pandemic people want to travel. They want to get out in the world.
On the topic of wallets and Apple, I'm a person who always tries to use the latest technology, whether it be, California mobile DL or a wallet feature with an Apple where I always struggle…
Dave: Did you already get a California mobile driving license?
Steve: I have one of the previous things that they had set up, but not the latest.
Dave: I'm just curious by how the user experience looks to people, you know,
Steve: The challenge that I always run into is then what, like, what do you do use that credential for? You get these narrow use cases where you've established it and then you are stuck, right? You can't use that beyond what you set it up for.
I think that's another area within the private arena. There's large companies that have been successful with establishing credentialed wallets, but then where's the interoperability, like where's the next use case where you can use it? Where can you go into a gas station and buy alcohol and show them this credential from one of these platforms and they're like, “no, give me your ID.”
Dave: Well, you should just-- yeah, I mean, it's not that far. I mean, okay, it's not there right now, but you know, the idea that you can just tap, I think it's-- and also you have to remember in a lot of places-- so for example, like let's say at the football stadium. You know, you've only got to prove that you're over 21 once to get like the fan card or whatever it is, and that was to have a marker. It's like you don't have to do this all the time, but you just need to do it in a kind of a secure way.
So, I think what mobile driving license would teach me-- because in a lot of cases when they tap their, you know, like in a bar or something, it will come up on the screen and it will say they want to know that you're over 18, not they want to know your name and address and age or something. So it'll get people used to the selective disclosure side of it as well. I'm very positive about it.
Steve: I want to segue a little bit into another topic that you've written quite a bit about and that you speak on, which is decentralized technologies and cryptocurrency and digital assets and ownership.
There was a period of time before we got into this AI hype cycle that we're in now where everything, all the money was going to crypto and Web3 and related tech. And then we saw almost like a, I don't know if it was a bubble bursting, but a lot of the hype around NFTs and the cryptocurrency, like it disappeared.
Now there's still, certainly if you're in that space, it's very much alive and well. But what do you say about the skepticism of this, call it a crypto winter? Do you think that we're on the right path still in that decentralized currency as a use case?
Dave: I think you have to distinguish very strongly between the two categories. So digital assets, you know, I think are going to be absolutely huge. Although what I think actually doesn't matter in the slightest, because Larry Fink thinks it's going to be huge. And he's forgotten more about finance than I'll ever learn. So the fact that the serious money guys are all saying we're all in on tokens, digital assets, I pay attention to that. That's going to be huge.
I don't think that has anything to do with cryptocurrency. You know, I'm-- I remain very skeptical about the long term cryptocurrency space. I mean, I'm going to get sidetracked in it now but, you know, digital currency, central bank, digital currency, digital assets, tokenization, Web3, I buy all of that. And actually I'm very enthusiastic about it. I can see why clients would go down that route and it and actually it makes complete logical sense. It's not ideological, it's about efficiency and then doing things sort of more cheaply. You know, if you saw the emails I get every day, you know, because I write for a few different publications I guess I'm on a lot of PRs lists, you know, and every day I see a bunch of emails saying “would you like our, you know, the head of our crypto exchange to explain why Bitcoin going down 5 percent is great for the long term value of Bitcoin?” And then the next step would be, “do you want our guy to explain why Bitcoin going up 5 percent is good for the long term value of crypto? Would you like our guy to explain why crypto not changing in value at all today is good for the long term value of crypto?” I mean, it's disconnected from the real world. It's, you know, but digital assets, massive.
Steve: Yeah, unfortunately, with Bitcoin and the cryptocurrencies, it just became speculation and gambling. People weren't using it to transact digitally, they were using it to buy and hold and hope that it would appreciate the value.
Dave: I don't want to ignite any further controversy. I don't want to get you canceled by anybody, but I think there are very good arguments as to why cryptocurrency should be regulated under gambling regulation and not under financial services regulation. Regulating it as a financial service kind of legitimizes it in a way. It sort of says it is a financial service. And it isn't, it's gambling. So, you know, there's a public health argument, which says, “well, regulate it as gambling, then, you know, try and stop people from getting completely ruined.” But anyway, it's a sidetrack, it doesn't matter.
Steve: Well, related to cryptocurrency and just how we exchange money and do transactions globally, your third book, The Currency Cold War, explores different geopolitical implications of digital currency.
And one of the, I guess benefits that I've heard from the cryptocurrency community is like this ability to leave the purview of governments, right? And so we've seen a lot of cryptocurrency in the dark web and in fraud and organized crime. Fortunately, I agree with you that like regulation and making sure that we have the same KYC and AML rules applied to that are really key. But what's your perspective on digital payments when it comes to large governments adopting these currencies, or just when it comes to things like currency manipulation and then digital payments and the trend of governments wanting to know more and more about, “Hey, if you've sent 5 now I need to know who you are.” What's your perspective on that evolution?
Dave: So the reason I wrote the Currency Cold War was because I was doing a lot of work on digital currency and we were looking towards central bank digital currency. But it seemed to me that people-- I mean, lots of people did know this, but it seemed to me people hadn't sort of taken on board quite how important this is.
You know, if you have, I mean-- I think the figure right now, I think-- so 4 percent of Turkish GDP is going into stable coins right now. Those stable coins are almost all, if not exclusively US dollar stable coins. That extends American soft power significantly. Actually, if America issued a digital dollar, the demand for it would be astronomical. I mean, I know for reasons I don't really understand America hates the idea of a digital dollar. But if there was a federal reserve digital dollar, there will be billions of people all over the world who would hold that in-- they don't want their local currencies. They want dollars.
And so, you know perfectly well that there are more hundred dollar bills printed than there are one dollar bills. You know that most US currency is outside the country and will never be repatriated. You know the demand for dollars is huge and whatever the people going on about BRICS say, it's not going to change any time soon.
So I thought, ‘hmm’ if you think about this sort of strategically then what would you want your digital currency to do? And in different countries, they may have different cultures around this kind of thing. They may have different-- but the example I like using-- I think it's interesting anyways, you know, suppose there was a Canadian digital dollar that was like the same as the American digital dollar, except it had some extra privacy built into it. Because, you know, Canadians are always going on about privacy, you know.
What difference would that make to whether people wanted it or whether they held it? You know, one of the common arguments you hear about digital currency is people say, “well, I don't want to use the digital currency because if I did that the government would spy on me and would stop me from buying guns or whatever it is that they're worried about.”
But the point is, if you had a digital currency where the government spied on you, nobody would use it. Like, what would be the point of a digital currency like that? You know, so it's much more complex and much more nuanced, the relationship between identity and money. My view is that some form of privacy enhancing central bank digital currency, but crucially not anonymous central bank digital currency, is the way forward.
And, you know, the analogous thinking, I think, is quite straightforward. You know, in the UK we had an industrial revolution. The industrial revolution created a need for money, for money wages, because we’d been feudal before that. That money wasn't in circulation, so people started to make their own money.
You know, the mints in the private mints would create their own pennies. And lots of people went into that. But after a time-- you can't make a living out of that anymore. You know, because the-- you know, you can't charge much more than for a penny than a penny. And then eventually the government steps in and have to produce it as a public good. So may as well skip that step. Why don't-- why not just have the government produce the digital dollar, digital pound, digital euro, and then we'll use those with appropriate privacy. You know, I hasten to add, and of course that takes you back to identity because then you sort of think, “well, If I'm going to have some sort of digital currency, I've got to put in some sort of digital wallet. If I'm going to have some sort of digital wallet, I have to have some sort of digital identity. What digital identity am I going to use for that?”
Of course, in the US, for example, there is no digital identity at the moment, so what are you going to do? If you make the rules about digital currency the same as the rules, for example, having a bank account, well then you're never going to get the coverage in the population that you need to make it truly useful.
So anyway, it's a long way away. We, you know, whatever politicians say about central bank digital currency, it's a long way away. And I think the Bank of England's perspective on this is actually really pretty good, which is that we need digital currency. It's important to support the next phase of the economy, but there's no burning platform. We don't need it tomorrow. Like right now I can use my card in the supermarket and everything's fine. You know, so let's spend the time to work out what a digital currency should do in an online networked economy and then work backwards as to, “well, how should it work?” I'm a big fan of central bank digital currency, but we don't need it tomorrow.
Steve: Excellent. Well, we're coming up on time, Dave, and one of the topics that we really haven't hit on yet that I want to cover is AI, artificial intelligence, deepfakes. Sometimes we're hearing the term ‘cheap fakes’ if they're not using AI technology. Misinformation in the US-- we've got a presidential election that we're barreling towards in November. And you and I are both serving on the Deepfake Summit Advisory Board. What do you think the impact of AI and deepfakes is on money on digital money that we've just talked through?
Dave: Look, I'm with Marc Andreessen on this one, who's also a billionaire. And you should probably listen to him instead of me. But he said a little while back, “look, you know, you can't fight AI with AI.” You know, that's a Red Queen's race. In order to do something about authenticity, reality, fakes. We need digital identity infrastructure; it's as simple as that. Because if I see a, you know, there's a picture in my browser, that picture needs to have a digital signature, otherwise the browser shouldn't display it.
Now, the digital signature might say it comes from, you know, Dave Birch. And that would give you no reason to trust it whatsoever. But the point is, at least you know where it came from. And if it didn't carry a signature, then you know it's been altered or amended in some way. And people are already working on that sort of stuff now.
But I think, you know, this idea that we need digital signatures, credentials, cryptography. We need math to do something about fakes, rather than AIs trying to spot other AIs. I mean, they're already better at, you know, as well as I do the little captcha things where you've got to work out, “Oh, is this, is this a ladder or is it some more stairs” or something like AI is already better at that than we are, you know, you can't keep them out that way.
So, no, it's a plea for real digital identity infrastructure. But yes, I'm-- was excited to be asked to join the board of the Deepfake Summit. It's a fascinating topic and I've learned more about it every day.
Steve: On the topic of captchas. I think the last 10 years we've helped train those systems because you know, Google is one of the biggest captcha providers. And we're just selecting images and helping their computer vision algorithms get better. [Dave: We're teaching it, yeah]
On another related topic. This is something that I think quite a bit about in digital identity is this idea of us having AI agents that know everything about us, that know our preferences, that have connections to our bank accounts, that could book travel for you as much as you're out in the world, knows your preferences, your rewards programs.
How do you think it changes our relationship with money when we have these AI agents or personal assistants that do things on our behalf?
Dave: Well, personally, I can't wait. I mean, I wasted two hours yesterday looking at these different savings. We have a form of tax efficient savings account here, an ISA. Like it's a middle class… like every year you have to look at these different ISAs and work out which one you want. I don't know-- and it's a waste of a couple of-- it would take bots a nanosecond to look at all these different ones, “Okay you need this one.” You know, the idea that for most people, and I include myself in this category, the idea that I could make better choices about money than even the most rudimentary bot is laughable. I mean, I'm not good at money at all. You know, a bot could scan a thousand accounts in a second and work out, you know, what they need to do. So I can't wait.
But also remember, also a lot of the stuff-- you know, you and I are interested in it, Steve, but, you know, to most people, payments are pretty boring. Like, I don't really want to get involved. Like, when I go, if I go park my car, I don't want to press any buttons, or I just want it to park. You know, my car has more computers in it, I'm told, than the Apollo Space Station-- the Apollo Space Capsule. So, and my car, no, it comes up on my phone, “we know where your car is parked. Okay. It's parked at the station. So pay the car parking.” Then why are you even telling me about this? It's so dull, you know? So I think actually the sooner bots-- and I’ll say something controversial here because I actually think teaching-- trying to get financial literacy is really an uphill struggle. I mean, teaching financial literacy to people, that's really, really difficult. It's probably better just to get the bots to do it for them instead, to be honest.
Steve: On the topic of travel, I was looking to book a trip from San Diego to Singapore. It happens to be United that's the best option for me through SFO, but all of the different options they have these days it's like, I need a degree in math or physics to be able to figure out how to get what I think is a good deal. I still haven't booked it because of that. So I feel like an AI system would be better at that.
Well, Dave, we're, we're at the end of our conversation; we're running a little bit over. If you've seen any of these episodes of EXECUTIVE SERIES, I like to go a little bit beyond the profile, and share more about the person behind the press releases.
And one of the things I've loved about following you on LinkedIn is you always do these videos out in nature. It reminds me of, like, the David Attenborough of digital identity. And you have great talks. Is that something you love? Nature? Or how did that come about?
Dave: It's just turned into its own thing. I mean, it's just one of the, like, honestly, if I'd have sat down with a marketing consultant and tried to plan this out, it would never have happened. It's just one of those things. It's a sunny day, you're out walking. I said, and I'm trying to think of things that I'm going to write in my Forbes column, and I've got one or two ideas and, you know, I just thought I'd do a little video about that. And I got such nice feedback on it, people really liked it. I just carried on doing it. And now if I don't post one of those videos for a couple of weeks, I get emails from people like, “are you okay? Is everything alright?” You know, but people like it and it's fun for me to do it.
You know, I try to get out every day. You know what it's like now we're in front of the screens all day long. I live right around the corner from a lake and, you know, beautiful area to walk. So I try every day, not to just sit at the screen all day, but get out and walk around. And, you know, sometimes when you're looking at the ducks, you can say something interesting about digital identity. Thank God.
Steve: I think you started a trend because these days a lot of people are taking walks in their neighborhood and doing videos…
Dave: I take that as a-- I mean, I do-- people say imitation is a serious form of flattery and I think that's true. I, you know, maybe I was responsible for sort of kick starting this a little bit.
Steve: Yeah, you had one, this week, I think, where you were on a moving walkway. I thought it was a virtual background until the thing stopped. And I'm like, “oh, he's like, walking backwards on a moving walkway.”
Dave: So. Well, I think I tried to mix it up a little bit now, just not sort of just strolling around through the trees all the time. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
Steve: When you're not making those videos and you do things for fun, if you have the time, what do you like to spend your time, your hobbies or other activities?
Dave: I love role playing games. The Alien role playing game from Free League Publishing is absolutely fantastic. I love that game. So Dungeons and Dragons. I used to play Dungeons and Dragons before it was cool and now I love it even more. And of course the new revised version is just about to come out. I like going to watch soccer and my local team is Woking FC. I've got a season ticket over there so I like to go watch that.
And I do like movies. I do like watching movies. Unfortunately I like watching the same movie. I've got to get out of the habit of sitting down to watch Aliens every week when I want to relax. I really should try other movies sometimes, I think.
Steve: Well, I've got a question that might be polarizing for many who follow the Alien canon. Prometheus, love it or hate it?
Dave: Hate it.
Steve: Hate it. Wow. I love Prometheus. I watched that.
Dave: No, it just didn't work. It just did not work for me at all.
Steve: Didn't work. Great. Well, we'll have to disagree-- agree to disagree on that one. I thought it was a great movie.
Well, we're at time. We're going to wrap up today, Dave. Thank you so much for sharing all these insights and spending time with me on the podcast. For those that are listening or watching, what's the best way that they could engage in and learn from you?
Dave: Well, follow me on LinkedIn, of course, DGW Birch. Or, have a look at subscribing to my Substack dgwbirch.substack.com.
Steve: Excellent. Well, I will put links to both of those right in the episode transcript. Dave, thank you again for being here today. It's been a true honor to have you on EXECUTIVE SERIES, and I look forward to collaborating with you in the Deepfake Summit and maybe seeing you out in the world at one of these conferences at some point.
Dave: Look, thank you for making it fun for me, Steve. It was easy. Look forward to working with you.
Digital Identity Insights with David Birch