Everest CEO Lays Out How Biometric eWallets Can Aid COVID-19 Stimulus

“Security and trust would be established in this system through the use of biometric onboarding. Each user would submit a selfie and pictures of their official government ID through a mobile app, with facial recognition being used to compare the images and confirm that they match.”

With government authorities scrambling to figure out how to stimulate the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Everest CEO Bob Reid is calling for the creation of a national digital identity and eWallet program.

Founded in 2017, Everest provides users with both a digital identity, dubbed the EverID, and a digital wallet known as the EverWallet. The technologies used in these solutions could prove beneficial in a national stimulus program, as Reid details in a Nasdaq guest post.

Taking Estonia’s e-government system as a model, Reid argues that giving every citizen an official digital ID tied to a virtual wallet would allow authorities to directly transfer payments to each individual as appropriate. What’s more, those payments wouldn’t be constrained simply to US dollars; they could also take the form of virtual vouchers that need to be spent on medicine or food, for example, and even with conditions such as expiry dates and geographic targets.

Security and trust would be established in this system through the use of biometric onboarding. Each user would submit a selfie and pictures of their official government ID through a mobile app, with facial recognition being used to compare the images and confirm that they match. This, together with an associated PIN and biographical details, would enable government authorities to be sure that the citizens to whom they’re sending payments are who they claim to be.

From there, it’s just a matter of distributing payments and letting end users cash them in as needed at participating stores. Merchants accepting electronic vouchers could send them back to the US government in exchange for payment in US dollars.

What’s more, user accounts could also store medical records, allowing them to carry vital data around with them in their smartphones, and to share it with medical professionals as needed.

“Management of 21st century economies and societies, and the associated crisis, require tools and infrastructure that address the environment,” Reid says, adding later, “By supplying digital tools and infrastructure in the form of cloud accounts tied to biometrics, not only can a crisis be avoided and managed and mitigated, but economies and societies can flourish.”

Source: Nasdaq

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April 28, 2020 – by Alex Perala