Transcript: Trust in digital economy

00:00 Dave: Hello and welcome to the Australian Payments Plus Point of View podcast in which we examine the theme of trust from all angles. Today we'll be examining the future of money, payments and identity through the lens of creating trust in the digital economy using Digital ID. I'm your host, Dave Ellett, Chief Commercial Officer at AP+, and joining me are Brad Carr and Andrew Black. 

Brad is the Executive for Innovation and Partnerships at National Australia Bank. His team develops partnerships and incubates innovations to take NAB forward. Andrew is the Managing Director for Australian Payments Plus Digital Identity Solution, ConnectID, and has led ConnectID since its inception. He is passionate about the growth of the digital identity ecosystem, driving the strategy and product development of new and emerging technologies, transforming experiences in identity, data, and open banking. Brad, Andrew, welcome to the Australian Payments Plus Point of View podcast.

00:54 Brad: Dave, thank you. Great to be here.

00:56 Andrew: Yeah, thanks for having us. 

00:56 Dave: No problem. Great to have you both today. So, I'm going to start off with a question for both of you. So, what does trust online mean to you? Who wants to take that one first?

01:10 Brad: I think of it probably as the intersection of empowerment and safety, that it is increasingly challenging online to see what you can actually trust, what is actually real, the quality of deep fakes. The deep fakes are becoming cheap fakes because they're actually easier and lower cost for the bad actors to prepare them. And I guess my favorite mantra is trust who you choose and choose who you trust, that I think we want people to use more secure channels for being able to validate themselves and validate the others that they're dealing with. 

But we need to empower them with choice and not try and straitjacket them into a singular solution. So, empowerment and safety for me and how we can leverage trusted parties to be able to provide verifications and bring the range of choices that we really need for citizens and businesses alike. 

01:52 Dave: Andrew?

01:53 Andrew: Yeah, for me, it's mainly around relationships. Maybe I haven't said this before, but... You know, having confidence that who I'm dealing with is gonna do and give me what I expect from them. So, whether that's a product or a service or an experience online, doing that in a safe, secure, respectful way, but fundamentally being transparent. 

So me knowing what experience I'm gonna get, knowing what's gonna happen with, whether that's my data or identity, but really just having confidence that, you know, I'm gonna have a trusted experience and relationship online.

02:25 Dave: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because, you know, obviously a lot of commerce now is happening online, you know, post-COVID it's significantly more, but with that comes a lot of, you know, threats for consumers as well. And so Brad, I'm interested coming from a large bank who serve thousands of businesses, what some of the primary challenges companies are facing and how can Digital ID look to solve some of those?

02:44 Brad: Yeah, and I'm glad you frame it in terms of the challenges for companies and the challenges for the businesses that we bank, because I think of it a lot more through that lens than I do for us as a bank ourselves. From a bank's perspective, I broadly think of us as having two sets of customers. We have consumers who increasingly are sensitive and concerned about the way in which their data is shared and stored in other places. 

They've been exposed to the sagas that we had with Optus and with Medibank, and I think that's really elevated this consciousness of where is my data and how can I minimize the sharing of my data. And at the same time, we have our business customers who are increasingly aware of the liability they're sitting on when they take in that consumer data that used to be thought of as... And I always hated this analogy of data as the new oil. It's not really appropriate. Data doesn't resemble oil in a number of ways.

03:32 It's not fungible. It can't be in multiple places and copyable and so forth. But the reality is increasingly we're seeing data as being the new asbestos or the new uranium. David Birch in his book described it as the new plutonium, that it's toxic, that it's value degrades over time, but you've got to think about how you're going to store it and who else can access it potentially.

And so we are in this environment where I think consumers and businesses alike are increasingly sensitive to this notion of consumers handing over copies of passports, copies of driver's licenses to a real estate agent, to other small businesses. How well is that protected? Is that going to end up on the dark web and is it going to fuel the next round of impersonations or social engineering scams?

04:14 So, as a bank, we're very motivated about how can we help both of those sets of our customers who are dealing with each other, and where can we leverage our capabilities to show up in more places for them, provide ways to minimise that transfer of data, enable those parties to go about their business and their transactions in the economy safely and securely and minimise the leakage, the risk and the leakage of that data.

04:38 Dave: I think, as you say, there's just so much more data that is in the economy, and I think it's, you know, just from a consumer perspective, I just think about how much is the minimum data I can give. And I think, you know, banks have a key role in that as well, and I think that's kind of what you were talking to, but...

04:51 Brad: Absolutely. 

04:52 Dave: So, how do some of the regulatory requirements impact the management of Digital ID systems in the private sector? And how much at the minute is carrot, and how much of that is kind of stick? Question for both of you. 

05:02 Andrew: Yeah, I might kick off, because I think there's a third category. There's a perceived stick in some scenarios, right, where we're seeing some, I guess, sort of movements in regulation, but still a lot of folklore out there, right? You know, and organisations thinking they have to store something or thinking they have to capture something. So, there's a real education piece to continue doing, and you'll see some advances, you know.

There's one in New South Wales, for example, around online alcohol sales, which, when it's been updated, has been updated with digital identity and data minimisation as a part of it. So, thinking about how that can be used, but also giving customers choice. So, to Brad's point, giving them a variety of different ways they can verify they're over 18, right, without having to take a photo of a licence as an option, but other options such as, you know, to use Digital Identity and connect that as an example, sharing you're just over 18. 

05:53 And there is some work still to be done and a lot more work to be done in aligning other regulations. And we know that the Department of Finance and Treasury and others are doing that, in particular sort of AUSTRAC AML sort of rule sets around moving away from a 100-point check or moving away from only a 100-point check to a reusable Digital ID. But there's this really big sort of middle gray area of just organizations who are doing it the way they've always done it and the just-in-case mentality.

So there's definitely a strong carrot, as Brad said, to businesses of reducing that risk, reducing the opportunity, reducing their potential liability. But there's still a perhaps lack of clarity or a perceived stick looming over some compliance departments.

06:40 Dave: I think a big bit of that is on the network effect, though. I think it's us in the industry have got to help with that perceived issue. 

06:45 Andrew: For sure. But one of the main things, it's not just the adoption of technology, it's the education of clarity of, "Yes, this does meet your requirements or this is better for a multitude of reasons."

06:58 Brad: Yeah, I think we've been more led by the reality of the scam environment and how we can enable our customers to stay safer more than we have been in terms of reacting to any issue of regulatory compliance. But as Andrew says, we do have the issue not only at federal government, but at local government, state governments, industry guilds in a lot of cases that have set expectations of how much data is being retained by businesses. 

And there is, I think, a collective effort and a collective need to unpick a lot of that. I think regulation can be a force for good. And I think we are fortunate that with Minister Gallagher and the Department of Finance, there's been very much a shared desire to make people safer, but also a recognition that we need a role for the private sector alongside the public sector in that agenda. 

07:43 I also think the role of things like TDIF have been important in helping to set standards, helping to set some commonalities and also helping to ensure that all the participants in the ecosystem can get to the right security standard together.

07:55 Dave: Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think it comes back to all of us are going to be thinking about all of those things to sort of drive adoption. I just wonder, maybe a question for a bit later, it's just how do we drive that network effect across the industry? Because Digital ID works in some use cases, but we've got to drive that consumer adoption piece, I think kind of Andrew's talking to, but also on the consumer side, but on the merchant side as well, you've got to say, what problems are we trying to solve? 

So I just want us to be interested for us to explore that a bit later in terms of kind of that network effect. Andrew, what are some of the benefits of the Digital ID for the private sector and kind of what are specific businesses looking to do with it?

08:32 Andrew: Yeah, there's a couple of broad benefits and then there's a couple that sort of are a little bit more particular for certain sectors. So fundamentally, it's creating trusted interactions between businesses and their customers, right? That's the sort of core benefit really that we see and we hear from businesses, being able to onboard easier and faster. And pragmatically, that means instead of taking 60 to 90 seconds on average to get out and take a photograph, take a selfie, upload a document, it takes sort of 10 to 15 seconds to a couple of taps of an app and a Digital ID sort of experience. 

So it's easier and that sort of customer onboarding is significantly better. There's also the risk reduction. So risk reduction in terms of reducing the amount of data that organizations need to store, not only from a cost and an operational point of view, but also the risk reduction of a future fraud or breach, for example, that's strengthening of onboarding. So those are sort of the broad benefits we see across sector.

09:30 Dave: And there's a regulatory piece, right? A reputation piece, sorry, for any, you know, Brad gave some examples of some of those data breaches. Those companies have had a big reputational impact as well, right? 

09:38 Andrew: Exactly. 

09:40 Dave: From holding that data and it being leaked.

09:40 Andrew: Exactly. Yeah. So there's a huge opportunity there to shift the paradigm and how do I regain trust with my consumers? And then if you look at particular sectors in a good old sort of two by two matrix, there's sort of a couple of different ways we see the market. There's those that are higher volume sets of transactions, but maybe lower trust needed. 

So, e-commerce transactions where you just need to verify your name or your age or something really easy. And that is really around friction and speed of onboarding. But also a lot of those organizations are smaller, right? And don't have the resources maybe of an app or a major organization. So want to take out the amount of risk to store. And then there's the higher end with these transactions or experiences maybe only do once a year.

10:26 So, buying a phone or opening a bank account, but it's a higher level of assurance needed. And that's where particularly these sectors are looking at how do I step up and think about an extra level of trust and assurance. And that's what a strong reusable Digital ID is giving them.

10:41 Dave: So, for those that don't know, the Australian government is looking to legislate and enforce a minimum age for children to access social media, with a view to banning children from opening social media accounts before 14 to 16, trialling age verification technology. Obviously, this would be a big move in the market, but what impact do you think it will have on those organisations and what could this lead to in the future?

11:10 Andrew: I'm happy to go first.

11:11 Dave: Big question, I know.

11:13 Andrew: Yeah. Look, I'll leave the merits of legislating as to a different debate. 

11:18 Dave: But it's still a social issue, right? 

11:18 Andrew: It is. Right, and look, reducing online harm, reducing scams, reducing risk, particularly for young people, is a good thing, right? But they're putting an arbitrary date on it is another thing. That's how we think about what's the more effective tool. What I'm more concerned about, though, is how do we put the right privacy protections in place for a trial or for an initiative like this? And I think it's really important to flag that this is great.

The government are doing a trial. Let's learn from that, figure out how we best do it. But making sure that we provide a number of options for young people to verify their age online that is privacy preserving and safe, doesn't capture date of birth or any personal information. We know the technologies are already out there and exist, like Connect ID, obviously, that allow you to just assert that you are over a certain age or under a certain age as well.

12:09 So I think that's what's really important that we consider the how and we make sure we minimize the data and any sort of personal data leakage as part of this trial. But Brad? 

12:19 Brad: I mean, I think the debate we're having and the legislative agenda, it's very much symptomatic of a society that is coming to grips with social media and with online harms and the kind of deepfakes that we touched on earlier. I actually feel it's, and I'm really pleased that you make the point there, Andrew, about it's not just being able to demonstrate that somebody is over a certain age, but also perhaps that they're under an age.

And I think this is where I worry at times that we're trying to solve the lesser problem. And we were fortunate when David Birch was visiting Australia recently that he made this point of, or I think it's actually in his book, "The Money in the Metaverse", yeah. And they've made the point that we've gone to such immense efforts all around the world to be able to keep kids out of adult spaces. We haven't made anywhere near the same effort to keep adults out of kids' spaces. And part of that is because it's hard, but it's probably more crucial.

13:08 There was a pretty horrifying piece on the Bloomberg Big Take podcast a few weeks ago about predators that had been grooming people through Roblox. My kids play Roblox all the time. Roblox and Minecraft are probably where they spend most of their lives. Kids come home from school and they jump onto those things. And as adults, we tend to roll our eyes or groan that they're spending too much screen time.

But the reality is that's how they socially interact with their friends. And it's interesting that children probably understand the system and the dynamics of how these environments work far better than we understand them. but we might understand the predators that are lurking and some of the risks and the threats better than the children have. 

13:47 So we've got this awkward kind of, I don't know, do you call it a dichotomy or what, of different parts of the risks or the rules of the game being understood separately by the child and the parent. And this is probably gonna be one of the most crucial spaces I think probably for the next five to 10 years for us all to come to grips with.

14:04 Dave: Yeah, I mean, I hadn't even thought about it that way. And I saw the recent stats as well on Roblox. I mean, some hours per day that kids are using it. And as you say, there's some bad actors that need, how you keep them out, that's a critical issue. And certainly one I hadn't thought of. But just kind of building on from that, Brad, what's your view on the role, the role particularly NAB is looking to play in terms of the digital identity space? You're clearly a founding partner, you're in there from the start, but why is this so important for NAB and kind of what some of the learnings you've used in from overseas?

14:34 Brad: Yeah, so firstly, you know, I see there as being three really crucial imperatives for banks to be engaging in this space and to be providing these kinds of services. The distant third of those three is revenue. It needs to obviously be a sustainable system. It needs to be able to generate and cover the investment made. 

But really the top two imperatives for us, and number one is combating fraud and scams, providing safer experiences for our customers, being able to show up for our customers in more places where they need us, whether that's in Facebook Marketplace or on eBay or Etsy, whether it's in minimising the amount of information they're having to provide to a real estate agent, whether it's telling the barman that your date of birth was at least 18 years ago and no more than that. 

15:18 Being able to help our customers with data minimisation and safer experiences in their lives is a clear number one. The number two is that it actually provides a way for us commercially to ensure that we are remaining relevant for our customers and that as our customers' lives are changing, as our customers are increasingly digitized in the experiences that they have and how they do business elsewhere and the other ways they conduct themselves, that we ensure that we stay relevant, that we give them a reason to come back through our app to validate themselves for different purposes.

And that we're not just ceding the customer relationship to a big tech platform or a hyperscaler. So, I think those are the real imperatives of why this matters. It's reducing the risk and the fraud exposure for our customers and it's ensuring that we continue to have a really foremost and relevant position in their lives. In terms of the overseas experience, the global exemplar I always look to are the Nordic countries. Norway and Sweden have been doing this for 20-plus years. And if I pick out the stats from Norway's Bank ID, aged between 20 and 60, 99% of Norwegians use Bank ID.

16:20 Dave: It's a huge amount. 

16:20 Brad: It is. And it's everybody. And they use it on an average of 220 times a year. So they're using it, you know what, four times a week. They're using it for everything. The great success or the key to that success, and, you know, I've heard Øyvind Westby Brekke, the CEO of Bank ID in Norway, I've heard him talk about the fact that they managed to get banks to collaborate with each other and banks to collaborate with government were the two most crucial success factors in getting this mobilized. 

And in about 2011, you were able to start using Bank ID to log into Norwegian government services. And that became the real inflection point where the uptake just grew exponentially. And so the Norwegians now have a service where they can log in being validated by their bank, their choice of bank, and from that they can get to all of the services they need through a secure channel. 

17:08 And just in terms of how secure it is, the online e-commerce fraud rate in most of the world is around about 3% of revenues. These are verified stats, very little bit region to region, but it's about 3% in most places. I think it's 3.1 in Europe. The fraud rate for e-commerce validated by Bank ID is 0.00042%.

17:31 Dave: That's the business case for every bank there, right?

17:33 Brad: Correct. And it's the business case for every retailer that's selling online that might be making profit margins of, let's say 10%. And then they're losing 3% of their revenues, so 30% of their profits to online fraud as a typical course of events. Being able to take that out and preserve that part of the margin for an online retailer is a big deal, as well as the impact for the consumer.

17:56 Dave: So I talked a little bit earlier, I said we'd come back to it around the network effect. So you obviously talked through a NAB lens and you referenced the Nordic example that there was also cross-collaboration across the industry. I'm just interested in your views, so kind of, is it right from an industry perspective that we need all the banks to be participating and driving this to make it a viable solution in Australia?

18:14 Brad: Yes, absolutely. And to be very clear, like we compete against the other banks and will continue to do so vigorously in throughout the economy but this is a space where we need everybody coming forward and getting there to the table together. This only works if it's achieving coverage and it's got all banks across the network with it together. 

You know I think when we first launched ConnectID and it was it was NAB and CBA there from the first day. It's great that we had two of the leading banks in the country getting this off the ground, but it did mean that the proposition to a retailer would be slightly weaker. Yeah between us we can validate half your customers. Well that still means you need to go and have a bespoke solution for the other half. 

18:53 But as you get to the point where now ANZ Plus has come on board with ConnectID. I'm hoping other banks will, not only majors, but also some of the foreign banks operating in Australia and some of the regionals, as we get to a point where it becomes well actually we've got 95% coverage of the Australian community. It becomes I think a much more compelling proposition and it helps to get us towards that point where a secure service is more ubiquitous in the Australian economy. 

19:15 Dave: Yeah so you talked about you you were one of the first movers from a NAB perspective. So, what has been sort of customer feedback thus far? Is there sort of any particular experiences that work well and kind of how where are you focused for the next sort of 12 months?

19:29 Brad: So, so far, I think, you know, probably the most notable bit of feedback has probably been surprised at how easy it is for the business and for the consumer alike, and the things that it does then help to remove the record retention requirements and the like. So I think, you know, the surprising easiness of it, I think, is the first. I think we've had to do a bit of work dispelling a notion that what we're doing here is we're not creating a new Digital ID. 

You know, I sometimes hear that question of, oh, how do I get a Connect ID, or where do I go to get my Connect ID? You don't. We're not creating a new ID. You don't need to do anything new. We're leveraging the fact that your bank has already validated you, and because of that, your bank can give an attestation of a particular attribute, such as, was Brad's date of birth at least 18 years ago, yes or no?

20:14 So I think that is probably part of the education journey, and it probably just reflects that Digital ID and ID verification services more broadly is something that the average citizen is pretty unfamiliar with.

20:24 Dave: Well, and I think it comes back to the banking app, right? I think from consumers, like going to their banking app, and if you've just got more features you're going to your banking app for, there's that trust and secure element there as well, right? And I think that's probably why, from a bank's perspective, you're sort of saying we're not actually introducing something new to you.

20:37 Brad: Yeah, and if you look, you know, there's no shortage of surveys elsewhere in the world. You know, in the UK and the US, there are probably two societies, probably most common to ours, the Bank of England and the Bank of International Settlements. They've all published surveys showing that people trust their bank more than they trust government, more than they trust tech firms, with their personal data, with their identity. 

So it makes sense that we're stepping forward and providing an option for people to use the party that they trust most. Trust who you choose and choose who you trust, to use my tagline again. But the point we get to, I think, is a NAB customer is going to be safer if they are using a secure ID service to verify themselves. 

21:16 They're going to be safer, whoever's identity service they choose to use, whether that's validating themselves with MyGovID, or with Services NSW, or with NAB, or with the fact that they have accounts at multiple banks and today they're going to validate themselves with one of the others. Our customers are safer if they're using any of those services. I think they're more likely to use one of those services if we've given them a choice.

If we've not said, here's the one and only ID that you're able to use in Australia, or here's the additional ID that you now need to go and open and create, but if we've instead said to them, "You can come through like the Norwegians through a single point, nominate who you want to be verified by, we're going to give you a choice who you're going to be verified by...", then I think they're much more likely to use it, they're much more likely to be safe and secure. Now, to give them that choice, we needed to step forward and be one of those firms providing that choice, and we need others to do likewise. 

22:06 And the great thing about ConnectID is it provides an infrastructure and a central standard and a place where the industry can come together and be the vehicle where hopefully more players will step forward and also provide that choice.

22:20 Dave: I think other countries are probably enviable. I know in the UK, for example, that the banks aren't getting together there and working on digital identity solutions, having the big four banks here working on that. As you say, if others come on board, that's got to be a great thing. 

One of the other things, though, is the intersection between public and private sector. So, Andrew, I'm interested in understanding how is that going to play out? Obviously, there's things that have been happening in the private sector, the public sector is making moves as well. What's going to happen in the next 12 months, and do we see interoperability being a big thing?

22:48 Andrew: Yeah, I think firstly we have to, and to Brad's point, I think if we don't have that joined-up approach from public and private sector, we've seen other markets where that fragmentation leads to a very different outcome, right? So, I'm fortunate enough to just have come back from Washington, and you see there where there's not a joined up approach between banks, regulators, big tech steps in, right? 

That's what it does. And I'm a loyal Apple user with every Apple device probably possible. But it's about that choice that Brad talks about, that if local markets don't work closely together and work with public sector, either regulators, states providers, we see that gap open up. And Google and Apple typically step in and look at digital driving licenses and wallets and lock out local economies from that. 

23:35 So the choice is really important. We've had Jon Shepard on here in the past in the Department of Finance. But there's a joined-up approach even with different parts of government to work on. There's the federal bill, which has been introduced by Minister Gallagher, which is great. It sets out that interoperable framework and rules of the road. There's work to do to open that up to the private sector, but the intent is pretty good. But there's separate activity happening with AusRoads, looking at aligning driving licence standards across the states. 

Again, really good activity. But joining those two things up is really important. There's federal myGov, Services Australia initiatives happening as well. There's a bit of alignment we need to do within government, that's state, federal, different agencies, as well as with the private sector. Thankfully, ConnectID is working with those organisations along with NAB and other banks to do that. 

24:28 But there's a really clear imperative that if we don't do it, then others will swoop in and potentially, you know, do it for us and take that domestic sovereignty of our data sort of out of our hands.

24:37 Dave: Yeah, I mean, it feels like we've got all the ingredients in Australia, you know, the big four banks working together, others are likely to come, you've got the interoperability between public and private sector. But it does feel like a time-bound piece that we've got to kind of realise that hopefully in the next 12, 24 months, create that network effect. Is that fair sense?

24:56 Andrew: It does. And at the same time, it's that window we've had over the last couple of years of the breaches that Brad alluded to, the public are ready for it. Citizens are ready for it. There's an education piece on how to use it. But there's a real... a real nervousness about data sharing and breach fatigue almost sort of reaching the populace. 

So, we're at that really sweet spot in my opinion over the next sort of 18 months of there's demand from businesses to start shifting this. There's a strong coalition of private sector trusted providers and government and consumers, citizens crying out for something different to do.

25:35 Dave: So, Connect ID is almost a year old, so it will be in October. How would you assess the progress over that year? And what do you hope will be happening in a year's time if you look to the future?

25:46 Brad: Look, it's been a great start, but it has just been the start. It's been the early days of bringing on a number of businesses, a number of companies, relying parties initially, expanding that network of the banks that are participating. And so I think the story of the 12 months, the first birthday has been one of great progress, but at the same time that there's more to do, we need to bring on more companies and have more of them using and offering the service to their consumers. 

We need to complete the set of the major banks and then into the regional or international banks. And those are really the crucial pieces that we just need to go very hard on in getting it to a point of being ubiquitous in society. Beyond that, I think the other two pieces that stand out, one is what Andrew has just referred to, and that's bringing together that alignment with government services.

26:31 And we've seen the federal government announce a proof of concept that they're gonna run on the trust exchange or text. And we'll watch, I think with great interest, how the proof of concept plays out. And I think they will probably have learnings that in a lot of cases will align or overlap with ours.

But ultimately, we need to look at how we can bring all of that together and enable the Australian consumer to be able to come through a singular front door that then enables them to choose a government or a bank or another provider. So, I think there's great opportunity. And I mentioned earlier that the Minister and the Department of Finance have been very supportive and very open-minded in recognising the need for private and public sector collaboration. We need to build on that. 

27:07 The other piece we ultimately need to build on is the cross-border linkages and it's great to have this system within Australia And that is where we do need to concentrate at the moment, but we're not a closed system, we are to a large extent a migrant economy and very much an import-export economy and so we need to have things like you know this year we had the Connect ID trial the technical proof of concept with Japan and with Dynepon printing in MUFG that proved that we can do it technically. 

We need to also make sure that we can do it in terms of the human element so that ultimately people coming to Australia from the UK or Japan or Canada or Singapore, New Zealand can be validated in Australia by a trusted provider back home and vice-versa for the Australian immigrant going aboard whether they're the working holiday visa maker in London or in British Columbia or the tourist or the person who's buying something online on eBay from an offshore seller, we need to be able to ensure that we can develop and pursue those linkages with other systems and ensure that we're not limited just at our border. 

28:07 Dave: I mean, you know that cross-border example you gave there would be a game-changer I'm sure for some people I mean, how far do you think that is away? Is that 12 months away 24 months?

28:16 Brad: Well, I think we know that we can do it technically. It's going to be bringing enough of a consensus or a coalition along on the journey to be able to recognise and accept each other, but there's certain corridors where I think it can work and you know Canada is a good example where you know, I called out Norway as being my global exemplar, but I mean Canada has done very well on this and is a couple of years ahead of us as well with the work they've done with the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework and the the DIACC group. 

So, that's probably one corridor where there's probably a greater maturity both of government and on industry in both sides that we can probably take that forward. New Zealand is an obvious place for us to align where we've got a lot of commonalities in the approaches of regulation as well as in the kind of firms that are operating on both sides. 

28:59 So, I would have thought it's probably realistic that within two years, we can be taking that forward within those channels. It might take a bit longer for some other markets, but I guess that's part of the journey, isn't it? Let's prove that we can make it work in the places that have those thicker corridors of traffic first, and then we can work on it elsewhere.

29:22 Andrew: And those are the proof points, I guess, that I'm really excited to see, and the UK is obviously one that's very close and passionate to my own journey, given I would have loved to have that in place for moving to Australia from the UK and not having to start from scratch. 

But what we're doing with each of those markets that Brad's talking about is technically trialling, looking at the legal and regulatory frameworks, but building, whilst it's a domestic solution now, but a future-proofed domestic solution to global standards, so that when those markets or when those different jurisdictions are ready for us or them, it's a much easier sort of pathway.  And with every different pilot, trial, experiment we'll get better. We learn and we improve that kind of going forward.

30:00 Dave: So, what's your sense, Andrew, a year into ConnectID?

30:05 Andrew: Well, as someone who's just hosted a first birthday party, I'm just hoping there's as much cake and sugar as there was at that one. Well, first, I'm just really excited. It's been a fantastic first year, you know, lots of learnings, but to have this finally in the hands of Australians to be able to use and verify they are who they are with their banks is not a feat to pass by quickly. So, I'm incredibly proud of what the team, but also the ecosystem as a whole has done, because it really has been a massive pull to get there. 

Yeah, and to add a sort of fourth major bank on board and additional, hopefully, states and territories as well, and really expand the capability and continue to learn. Because as we're seeing, this is new behaviour for Australians to have to wrap their heads around. It's not something we've done here before.

30:46 So, the education piece is really important. So, continuing to educate on how to use it, making sure that it's in as many places as possible. And that's what I think the next year will really bring for us, that sort of rollout across multiple different sectors, across telco, insurance, financial services, and just expanding the breadth and continuing to learn, evolve and put this in as many places as possible.

31:09 Dave: So, my reflection is we've made a fair bit of progress in the first 12 months, you know, from hearing you both speak, but a lot more to go. But we've got all the ingredients necessary for that to happen. And that we still need to have a sort of lot of industry coordination to kind of realise that opportunity. But I'm super-excited as well by Brad's view of kind of where we could go in the future, cross border and stuff.

I just think for consumers and for businesses looking to verify people that hopefully should be a game changer. And I'll just remind Brad, because this has really stuck with me. The one thing that I'd encourage everyone, trust who you choose and choose who you trust. I just love that, Brad. I think that should be the tagline maybe for ConnectID in the next marketing piece. 

31:44 Andrew: I don't know if Brad's trademarked it yet. 

31:45 Dave: We'll check that post the podcast.

31:48 Brad: Hopefully that encapsulates that sense of where I started about empowerment and safety in that, you know, this is not about straightjacketing people into a particular solution. It's not about a surveillance economy. It's about empowering the individual and letting them take steps in terms of how they want to conduct their business. But giving them options that support the safety and security in the way that they do that. 

32:09 Dave: Great. Well, I'd just say, Brad, Andrew, thank you very much for joining me in the Australian Payments Plus Point of View podcast today I think our listeners will have gained valuable insights from both your perspectives. So, thank you.

32:21 Brad: Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Andrew. 

32:22 Andrew: Yeah. Thank you, thanks, Brad.