Mobile ID gaining traction in India

Internet of things has brought people closer together across the world. It has allowed consumers to purchase virtually anything at any time. Further the Internet industry is spurred by entrepreneurship and supported by variety of industries and large enterprises.

Today we do so many transactions online, whether using a desktop, I-pads or phones. And at a lot of places you need to identify yourself in a very secure manner. This is where Mobile ID came in picture. To know more about it, Dataquest spoke to Atul Singh, Business Development Director, Valimo Wireless at Gemalto.

Why Mobile ID is important ?

Now days, people are very scared of revealing their identities online because of ID theft, ID fraud that are happening worldwide. Even big companies like Yahoo, Amazon or the Banks, they all have been victims of online fraud. Further people are also losing their passwords and usernames by using online services.

Sometime it become difficult to manage and remember different passwords and user name For example we have Facebook, twitter, yahoo,MSN user Id- passwords. So basically, on an average normal person who is active on the internet has got 26 user names and may be 9 passwords that he has to manage in his daily life. And with Mobile ID we are bringing convenience and trust in this whole eco-system whereby your mobile number happens to be your only username and you can choose your own 4 or 5 digit pin which will be your password. So basically, it simplifies the lives of people who are managing a number of passwords usernames and it makes all the transactions very highly secure and it gives the convenience to the end customer.

How Mobile ID works?

In Mobile ID we are accessing internet on one channel which could be through the internet link of your device. So while using the website you just have to enter the mobile number for login. After which you will get an SMS on your mobile phone for authentication.

So basically here there two different channels, one to access the web server and other for authentication which is the mobile phone telecom operated channel. And since there are two different channels this is called, in technical terms, OOB- Out of Band, where the access channel is different from the authentication channel. This is why it is extremely difficult to hack.

What is the future of Mobile ID?

There is a lot of buzz across the world on the Mobile ID and even GSMA predicted an year ago that Mobile ID revenues for telecom operators worldwide would be close to 17 billion dollars by 2017. So the market is quite large worldwide.

What is the driving force that is pushing the usage of Mobile ID in India's context? If you can name a few.

Yes! In the beginning of 2006 the Indian Government laid emphasis on the national e-governance plan called NEGP. The government focussed on electronic governance where they wanted to give various e-governance services to citizens of India electronically. Last 3 years into that policy they realized that they cannot ignore mobile governance. Because more than the broadband usage or the internet usage or desktops or laptops it was the mobile phones for which the subscribers were exponentially increasing in India.

Today the number of subscribers in India is close to 900 million. So in 2009-10 the government went back to NEGP and said that they have to include m-governance as well. So, on your question of driving force, the Government of India released the mobile governance frame work on 25th of December 2012. They released the mobile governance frame work and subsequently they released the e-authentication and the mobile authentication framework.

So these two frameworks were put in as a law in 2012 and then in 2013 I believe it was March 25th 2013 the Government of India passed the electronic delivery of services bill, Electronic Delivery of Services in India. So after that Act, all government departments across India have to offer all the services online.

Don't you think that in comparison to the other countries India still faces some challenges as consumers are not prone to such kind of technologies and they resist to adopt?

This is why I mentioned in the beginning that at the backend is complicated for the technology providers; however for the end-user it is extremely-extremely simple. All you have to remember is your phone number and a four digit PIN. It's like using an ATM card to withdraw money.