BankID Norway – Evolution and Success

If you follow my 80+ blogs on identity, you should like this success story today.  The Norwegian digital identity scheme, BankID, serves as the #2 best financial identity case study (behind India’s UIDAI) with a penetration rate of 97% across 4.7 million citizens. What could US banks learn? What are their challenges in replicating this model? 

Today I’m giving the background on what BankID is.. In part 2 I’m going to interview my good friend Eric Woodward, former president of Early Warning and the creator of Zelle_ID (see youtube), at least until it was killed as the new CEO asked “what on earth does identity have to do with payments”. OMG

The FIDO Alliance is hosting a Webinar on Bank ID Norway tomorrow at 7am pacific.

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AP2 as Merchant Signals – 4 Scenarios 

Today I’m outlining three near-term scenarios (24 months) for how AP2 signals will work in agentic commerce. Per my blog last week, AP2 is the agentic payment scheme with the most momentum (160+ partners), but in the immediate term (2026–2027), it will operate primarily in a “signals” metaphor for 3 main reasons:

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Blog – AP2 Operations: Near Term – Long Term

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As most of you know, AP2 is an open spec with over 160 partners. Today I’ll discuss 2 scenarios for how AP2 will integrate with card payments (with consumer Authorization). While most understand the technology behind these scenarios, the politics and strategies may provide the best insights. Identity needs a network, but network effects create stasis or equilibrium as existing participants make investments based upon current operation. Cards are the incumbent, and networks have a great plan, the biggest hurdle isn’t tech, it’s getting everyone in the boat with the right controls, governance and economics.

  1. Scenario 1 – Near Term – AP2 credentials are one of many “signals” that work with merchant owned fraud. Signals will be consumed by Merchants and MSPs as they maintain responsibility for fraud risk, and by networks/Issuers for authorization (and tokenization). 3DS has been around since 2008, I wouldn’t expect us to move at lightspeed to scenario 2 until consumers (and new fraud vectors) drive us there.
  2. Scenario 2 – Long Term – Bank issued credentials inside the device bound secure Storage (Apple Enclave, Goog Titan M2, Samsung Knox) with Issuers (thru networks operating) as the governing authority. This will involve a liability shift, a new role for mobile in managing credentials, and a new governance regime. 
  3. Scenario 3 (not covered) is walled gardens that control all standards, operations and own the risk (ex Amazon).

A nice chart covering these scenarios is in this link, courtesy of Notebook LM and Julie Fergeson.

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Identity Driving Payments

Great article in today’s MRC Journal Moving identity authentication earlier in customer flow/

Short Blog. Summary. US issuers are creeping into identity and eCom data as they seek to build a non-network auth. The only model which will work is where networks are the enablers of identity. From a payments perspective, there are only 2 options for owners of identity and authorization 1) V/MA or 2) Apple/Google.

I was fortunate to go to MRC-Vegas this year. Whereas M2020 is filled with Issuers/Fintechs/Investors MRC is filled with payment operators (merchants), and the companies supporting them (ie Visa/Cybersource, Stripe, Adyen, …). 

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Payment Authorization – Under The Hood

Retailers should tread very carefully in direct issuer connections

My focus over the last 18 months has been identity, trust, authorization and assertions. Today I thought we would get under the hood a little on the technology of authorization and the current operational issues with a key network service: 3DS. 

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Identity, Authentication and Risk

Bridging Domains – Short Blog – Random Thoughts

This is a “Random Thoughts” blog, which means there are many points that I’ve left hanging (not finished cleanly). The blog’s objective is to stimulate discussion, so please don’t hesitate to comment.  Identity is a hot topic for me with 15+ years of previous bosts. Here are a few updates … as well as my evolving perspective. 

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SRC – Why Now and What is the Opportunity?

Short blog. What opportunity are top US issuers chasing with an SRC wallet?

During my talks with top acquirers, I gained new insight into eCommerce volumes. As a committed ApplePay user I was shocked to hear that ApplePay use in browser is significantly under 5% (even in iOS/Mac devices). Per my blog on intersections, the dynamic is due to both Chrome vs Safari and merchant adoption.

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Merchants Tokenize – eCom Wallet Challenges

UPDATE – Nov 29 2022 – Note that I have conflated the relationship between SRC and 3DS 2.0. 3DS 2.0 is the authentication protocol used by SRC. 3DS 2.0 has been widely adopted as a mandatory replacement to 3DS 1.0. Part of the driver for adoption was the EU SCA mandate. SRC has NOT been widely adopted as it is a fairly broken consumer experience at the moment. 

I’m at M2020 today and it has been a “back to normal” fantastic event. Let me put my “merchant hat” on for a story from their perspective.

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