8 Game-Changing Benefits of IDVC You Can’t Afford to Miss (Examples + How to Get Started)
The cost of identity fraud to governments and businesses
Did you know that impersonation scams led to more than $1.1 billion in reported losses in 2023? The proliferation of deepfake technology has only exacerbated this issue, with deepfake fraud increasing by over 1,500% in regions such as the Asia-Pacific. Despite the widespread threats, only a small percentage of businesses have comprehensive safeguards against such attacks, leaving many vulnerable to significant financial and reputational damage.
Rising global adoption of identity solutions
According to recent reports, the adoption of digital verification technologies is accelerating, seen from projections of the global identity verification market growing from $10.9 billion in 2023 to $21.8 billion by 2028. This growth is driven by rising identity theft incidents, the increased threat of fraud, and stringent privacy regulations, alongside digital transformation initiatives. Governments, too, are recognising the need; countries like Estonia and Singapore are leading the way with national initiatives that integrate verifiable credentials to enhance digital governance and protect citizens’ data.
For institutions considering their next strategic move, the shift toward IDVC is more than just an option—it’s becoming essential. This article explores eight compelling reasons to implement IDVC, providing practical examples of how this technology can transform operations, bolster trust, and position organisations for future success.
Table of Contents
8 Practical Gains of IDVC for Large-Scale Applications
Increased Operational Efficiency in High-Volume Environments
IDVC streamlines the verification process, reducing manual checks and wait times. For instance, public services that require identity verification, such as applying for permits or licenses, often involve significant manual review. Implementing IDVC automates these processes, enabling faster approvals and fewer errors.
Example Use Case
Public Benefits Verification
In many countries, citizens applying for social welfare, healthcare subsidies, or housing assistance must provide multiple identity and qualification documents that require verification by administrators. IDVC can eliminate manual checks by providing tamper-proof, instantly verifiable digital credentials that are all consolidated in one place, allowing administrators to confirm eligibility faster and with fewer errors, significantly improving processing times and public service throughput.
Real-world Application of Verifiable Credentials
Previously, during the pandemic, Accredify served as the leading issuer of verifiable COVID-19 test results that are notarised by the Singapore government. The implementation of such verifiable COVID-19 test results provided a scalable, reliable, and instant method for government and immigration authorities to verify an individual’s COVID-19 status, ultimately leading to the resumption of international travel in and out of Singapore amidst the lockdown.
These verifiable test results are form of verifiable credentials that form part of an individual’s holistic IDVC make-up.
Cost Reduction Through Automated Verification
In addition to higher and more accurate throughput, automated verification enabled by IDVCs also reduces operational costs related to manual verifications. By providing a self-service verification portal that is accessible by downstream users, governments and business can eliminate manhours and resources spent on verification.
Example Use Case
License and Permits Verifications
High-risk vocations require employees to have specific licenses and permits for their day-to-day jobs. For example, individuals working in construction may require licenses to operate heavy machinery or permits to enter restricted areas. IDVC enables employers, clients, and government agents to easily verify an individual’s licenses and permits on a self-serve online portal, significantly reducing the time and effort spent on verifying these documents. This automated verification saves administrative hours, minimises compliance risks, and reduces costs related to manual verifications.
Vocational License Mock-up
Real-world Application of Verifiable Credentials
Accredify works with a Singaporean government agency to issue vocational licenses in a highly regulated industry. It is important to ensure that these vocational licenses are reliably verified and enforceable, to due to security and safety risks that are inherent in the activity that the license permits. With verifiable licenses, enforcement officers can instantly validate an individual’s right-to-operate without bringing their laptops to the field or manually cross-checking against central databases. This saves the agency time, effort, and costs spent on verifying licenses that they have issued, while ensuring the safety and security of the country and public.
Improved Citizen and Stakeholder Experience with Self-Service Verification
Another advantage of enabling automatic verification through IDVC is the simplification of identity sharing for citizens and stakeholders in procuring services, such as license renewals or employment applications. For government agencies, this streamlined experience supports higher public service satisfaction.
Example Use Case
Professional License Renewal for Public Services.
Professions like healthcare and engineering require license renewals and verifications periodically. By issuing IDVC-based licenses, government agencies allow professionals to manage their licenses as verifiable credentials, enabling instant renewal checks and providing self-service verification. This reduces the need for physical visits or document submissions, improving user satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Membership Card Mock-up
What we're seeing today
Increasingly, we have been having conversations with our partners on how verifiable credentials can enable their renewal strategies – typically for time-based memberships, licenses, and other related training credentials. With IDVC-based credentials, our partners retain dynamic control over their issued credentials and can ensure that expired credentials are reflected accordingly upon verification. This serves as an effective tool to remind credential holders to renew their credentials.
Scalability Across Departments and Large Systems
IDVC’s adaptability makes it suitable for various use cases, from verifying employee credentials in HR to validating professional licenses. This scalability allows large organisations to integrate IDVC across multiple departments, maximizing its operational impact.
Example Use Case
Cross-Agency Document Verification for Public Services
Government agencies often require interdepartmental collaboration, such as when citizens apply for licenses or permits needing approvals from multiple departments. IDVC allows each department to verify documents instantly without repeated requests or redundant data entry, enhancing collaboration across agencies and providing citizens with a streamlined, single-point service experience.
Real-world Application of Verifiable Credentials
Recently, we completed a POC project with an esteemed partner for credentials that enable professionals to claim CPD points. Similar to the point above, these credentials enable CPD claims to be carried out at scale across disparate organisations – our issuing partner and the organisation awarding CPD points – reducing the back-and-forth between both parties, repeated data entry, and improving the CPD claim experience for professionals.
Future-Proofing for AI and Predictive Analytics in Public and Private Sector Initiatives
IDVC is “AI-readable” data, making it ideal for advanced analytics and AI-based initiatives. Governments and enterprises can harness verified data in analytics projects that guide policy decisions, workforce planning, and risk management, setting them up for future innovation.
Example Use Case
Workforce Analytics for Talent Management
Large organisations, such as government departments or corporations, need data-driven insights to plan workforce development. With IDVC, verified employee credentials can be integrated into AI systems, enabling predictive insights into workforce skills gaps or training needs. This helps with planning and resource allocation, keeping the organisation agile and ready for future demands.
Expert Insight
Here’s an excerpt from Accredify’s Advisor, Dr. Goh Jing Rong, on the importance of verifiable data in AI and data analytics:
Data serves as the foundation for GenAI models; therefore, ensuring the accuracy and authenticity of data is essential to minimise flawed or biased outcomes. By using verified, true-to-source data, we can mitigate GenAI hallucination, an increasing issue where a GenAI model, such as a large language model (LLM) or Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), produces outputs that are incorrect, nonsensical, or completely fabricated. This occurs when AI generates information that appears plausible but is not grounded in factual data or reality. If [organisations] act on these incorrect outputs, it will not be impactful in, or even detrimental to, improving [business outcomes].
Thus, it is imperative to ensure the legitimacy of all documents and information, and one way to do that is by using verifiable credentials.
From his insights, it’s clear that governments and businesses need to begin ensuring all their data is secure, verifiable, and trustworthy, so they are ready to fully realise the benefits of AI and data analytics.
Building Public and Stakeholder Trust with Transparent Credentialing
When citizens and stakeholders know that data is verified, they are more likely to trust the organisation’s processes. For governments, this trust is essential for effective public service delivery, while enterprises benefit from increased brand credibility.
Example Use Case
Trusted Public Sector Licenses and Permits
Government bodies issuing business permits, professional licenses, or event permissions can use IDVC to streamline verification processes. For example, a government body could issue verifiable licenses to vendors for a public event, allowing both law enforcement and the public to instantly verify the vendor’s legitimacy through a digital credential. This transparency reduces the risk of unauthorised activities, builds public trust, and supports the government’s commitment to safe and regulated public spaces.
Real-world Application of Verifiable Credentials
Accredify works with Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) of Singapore to issue verifiable business licenses. This secures digital trust within the Singaporean business ecosystem as every business entity operating within Singapore can have its business license and related corporate information easily validated via a self-serve online portal, ACRA trustBar, ensuring business is conducted only with legitimate entities within Singapore.
Enhanced Data Security Across Distributed Teams and Systems
IDVC secures identity data within a structured framework. Uniformly structuring data, in way that is tamper-proof and verifiable, ensures identity data is truly portable and interoperable. In this way, IDVC secures identity data flows across various arms of an organisation, a top data security priority for public sector organisations and large corporations with distributed operations. With IDVC, governments and businesses can reduce data exposure and mitigate cybersecurity risks for their employees and their organisations as a whole.
Example Use Case
Workplace Clearance Levels for Sensitive Departments
Unlike two-factor authentication (2FA), which verifies only a single identity interaction, IDVC enables governments and large organisations to assign verifiable clearance levels to employees that dynamically update with role changes, skill qualifications, or compliance training completion. For instance, a government department handling confidential data could issue IDVC-based clearance credentials to each staff member, confirming their clearance level and qualifications. These credentials are tamper-proof, instantly verifiable, and can be dynamically updated without requiring re-issuance, enhancing access security across sensitive departments and offices, while providing a long-term data integrity layer.
In The News
In 2024, a deepfake scam that cost a multinational firm $25 million made international headlines. In this instance, an implementation of dynamic IDVC protocols within the institution could have protected the business against the highly elaborate deepfake heist. By ringfencing high-value transactions within an approval process that involves the authentication of nonreplicable IDVCs, there could have been multiple points of protection against the operation.
Firstly, the false ‘Chief Financial Officer’ would not have been able to provide proof of the real CFO’s IDVC as it is nonreplicable, which would serve as the primary point of failure.
Secondly, when the employee initiates a high-value transfer, their dynamic IDVC could have blocked the transfer and initiated a transaction approval protocol that involves the validation and approval of multiple internal stakeholders.
Simplified Compliance with Data Protection Regulations
IDVC helps organisations ensure compliance by creating transparent, tamper-proof records that are easy to audit. Governments and enterprises benefit from reduced regulatory burdens and improved readiness for data protection audits, keeping them in line with stringent legal requirements.
Example Use Case
Medical Records Compliance for Healthcare Providers
Healthcare institutions face stringent compliance requirements for handling patient data. IDVC can enable verifiable, tamper-proof health records that comply with privacy regulations like PDPA/GDPR. This simplifies audits and reduces the administrative burden on compliance teams by providing a clear, secure data trail, supporting more efficient data management and regulatory adherence.
Mock-up of an equipment record accessed via Nucleus
Real-world Application of Verifiable Credentials
IDVCs can extend even to non-living things. For example, Accredify has also recently completed a POC with an equipment manufacturer in securing their equipment’s data within a publicly-accessible digital centre that serves as a stronghold for all verifiable credentials issued to it with our product, Nucleus. In essence, it serves as the IDVC of the equipment, where all verifiable credentials related to it is stored within that equipment’s Nucleus. With easily accessible verifiable maintenance records, Nucleus makes audits, compliance, and sales seamless and trusted.
Real-World Applications of IDVC
IDVC is already being adopted worldwide:
- Singapore: The Singapore government uses digital credentials through the OpenAttestation framework to issue tamper-proof academic certificates and COVID-19 health records, streamlining access to verified documents.
- Canada: The Digital Identity and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC) promotes digital identity verification across provinces, enabling trusted access to public services and secure data sharing.
- United Kingdom: The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) is piloting digital identity verification to provide citizens with secure access to government services like tax filing and social security.
- IBM Digital Credentials: Large enterprises, such as IBM, use verifiable credentials to authenticate employee skills, enabling more accurate hiring and simplifying internal talent management.
These applications showcase IDVC’s practical impact, underscoring how governments and enterprises are already benefitting from its efficiencies and security in handling high-stakes data.
Getting Started with IDVC
The benefits of IDVC extend far beyond the technology itself; they reshape how organisations interact, ensuring seamless, secure, and trustworthy digital experiences.
For decision-makers, the time to explore IDVC isn’t just soon—it’s now.
Ready to get started? Book a demo today!
Or test out IDVC with a low-commitment pilot!
What Can We Do For You Today?
Whether you are looking to transform your business, have questions about our solution, or curious to explore new use cases with verifiable information, we are always happy to chat!