Page 13 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Recommendations

ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services
Recommendations

Title of recommendation National identity, eKYC and payments addressing
Working Group Ecosystem

Audience for recommendation DFS regulators

Policy makers and regulators are encouraged to use national identity systems, or other market-wide identity
systems, to help with opening transaction accounts, addressing payments, and, in some instances, improving
transaction security.

• The DFS Focus Group commissioned a study called “Review of National Identity Systems”, to: Determine
the extent of pervasive national identity systems; understand the extent of the use of biometrics with
those systems; and look at the use of these systems in enabling digital financial ecosystems. In general,
the study found higher-than-expected pervasively distributed identity systems, and a surprisingly large
number of countries using biometric systems. The use of these systems with financial services, however,
is still quite limited.
• Countries with a national identity system, or another similar market-wide identity system, should recognize
this as a public resource. Access to this directory, and use of it, should be open to all regulated DFS
providers at a reasonable cost. Countries without a national identity system are encouraged to develop
one.
• DFS Providers and regulators should cooperate to ensure that a uniform addressing directory for payments
is established, enabling the addressing of payments using national ID's, mobile phone numbers, or
other non-provider specific aliases. Such a directory should enable persistent consumer and enterprise
identification numbers that may be made public without compromising the security of transaction
accounts.

• Policy makers, including financial regulators, should examine ways to use national identity systems to
reduce know your customer (KYC)-related barriers to opening a transaction account, such as by linking
account opening to a national identity number system, and/or leveraging SIM registration processing. If
possible, the use of biometric data tied to a national ID is strongly encouraged because of the potential
of reducing fraud.
• Where national identity systems are not pervasively used, policy makers should consider, where possible,
having a "zero KYC tier" for consumers, enabling low value transaction accounts to be opened without
identity documents.

• DFS providers are encouraged to create mechanisms for consumers to dispute transactions with fraudulent
merchants, and in some specific instances support revocation of funds.

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