Ali Mohammad Al Khouri, Director General of the Emirates Identity Authority presented a paper at the Middle East Retail Forum. The title of the paper was “The impact of ID Management Infrastructure on the Commerce Sector”. In it he stresses the security advantages of a biometrically verified ID. It is not to hard to see that in the future it will be necessary to be a part of the biometric database in order to buy or sell anything.
In our last post here on "News of the Beast" we discussed how the UN was going to tap the experience and knowledge of the UAE's Emirates Identity Authority for a global system of biometric identification. This time we see more of what Emirates ID is planning for future and this gives us a good idea of where the rest of the world will be going as well. It's about buying and selling.
UAE's Emirates ID projects pave way for future eCommerce economy
Ali Mohammad Al Khouri, Director
General of the Emirates Identity Authority, has stressed that the
strategic projects being developed by the Authority fall in line with
the UAE vision to lay the foundations of a secure modern digital
economy in the country and keep pace with the accelerated
transformation witnessed by businesses and industries around the
world.
Dr. Al Khouri underscored that the
infrastructure of digital identity plays a fundamental role in
combating identity theft crimes which are threatening the global
eCommerce market whose value is estimated at $2 trillion. He
considered that development of trusted standard mechanisms for online
identity verification should enhance customers’ trust in the modern
“virtual” economic environments and double fold the value of
eCommerce market.
In his paper presented at the Middle
East Retail Forum in Dubai, Dr. Al Khouri said that the advanced
identity verification mechanisms provided by Emirates ID have the
potential to develop eCommerce in the UAE and make a quantum leap in
the service sector at government and private levels. This should in
turn boost the sustainable development in the UAE and enhance its
global competitiveness.
In the paper entitled “The impact of
ID Management Infrastructure on the Commerce Sector”, Dr. Al Khouri
stated that the infrastructure developed by Emirates ID to verify and
authenticate personal identity in the UAE should contribute in
facilitating transformation into secure electronic environments and
eliminate the challenges related to identity verification and
authentication.
During the two-day forum, Dr. Al Khouri
pointed to the growing challenges related to security of commercial
transactions in light of statistics showing a rise in identity fraud
and theft worldwide, particularly in the last two years.
He underlined the international
report’s findings that the biggest challenge facing the business
sector globally is to control fraud and verify customers’
identities, which necessitates setting up a mechanism for validating
personal identity, noting that the UAE has gone far on the road of
securing and boosting eTransactions through the advanced features of
the ID card and the digital authentication centre which allows online
instant validation of authenticity and reliability of the data
embedded in the ID card.
Dr. Al Khouri highlighted that, more
than ever, the rapid changes taking place in the contemporary world
led to restructuring business and industry sectors, considering that
these changes have remarkably revolutionised consumers’ behaviour
making them more reliable on digital channels than traditional ones
amid the unprecedented prevalence of internet, smart devices and
social media networks.
