I rarely use plastic anymore.
Cards sit in my wallet more out of habit than necessity. Payments have already moved on. Mobile wallets, account-to-account payments, and embedded finance have changed how money moves. Identity, however, has not kept pace.
We are still pulling out physical ID, uploading documents, and relying on processes that feel out of step with the digital experiences people expect. From a payments perspective, identity is now one of the biggest sources of friction in the Canadian payments system, and one of the biggest opportunities to improve it.
Meanwhile, other markets have already moved forward with innovation in this area, like Sweden’s BankID which enables seamless identify verification for banking and everyday services. The EU’s eIDAS 2.0 framework is driving secure, interoperable digital identify across member states. These examples show what’s possible when identity becomes digital, reusable, and trusted.
That is why the recent article: “From Trust to Growth: The Business Case for Digital Client Verification in Open Banking and Lending” from Digital ID & Authentication Council of Canada on the business case for digital client verification in open banking stood out to me. It frames digital identity not just as a regulatory requirement, but as a growth enabler. That distinction matters.
Open Banking Needs a Stronger Trust Layer
Open banking conversations often focus on data access. Balances, transactions, and consent-based sharing are foundational. But the DIACC workshop makes a clear point: data without strong, reusable identity does not scale.
If you cannot confidently answer who is on the other side of a transaction, everything downstream gets harder. Onboarding slows. Fraud risk increases. Conversion drops. Costs rise.
In payments, we have spent years improving speed and reliability. Yet identity verification often remains manual, repetitive, and disconnected from the payment flow itself. That gap is becoming harder to justify.
Why This Matters for Payments
The DIACC article reinforces the need to move identity out of a compliance-only bucket by calling for shared metrics that capture both fraud reduction and growth outcomes like conversion rates and customer lifetime value.
From a payments lens, that shift is overdue.
When identity verification becomes digital, secure, and reusable, onboarding becomes faster with fewer drop-offs. Fraud prevention improves because stronger identity signals exist before money moves. User experience improves because verification fades into the background instead of interrupting the journey.
Payments has seen this pattern before. Tokenization, real-time payments, and stronger authentication all faced early skepticism. Today, they are expected. Digital identity is following the same path.
Eliminating Plastic Is Not Just Convenience
Moving beyond plastic ID is not about novelty. Physical credentials introduce real risk. They are easy to lose, expensive to replace, and difficult to keep current.
As highlighted in the DIACC discussions, digital identity allows individuals to prove only what is required, when it is required, and with consent, while enabling reuse across sectors and use cases.
From a payments infrastructure perspective, that means less data exposure, simpler integrations, and systems that scale more cleanly. It also aligns with how people already live. We trust our phones with our money. Identity should live there too.
Trust as Infrastructure, Not Overhead
One of the strongest takeaways from the DIACC workshop is the call to treat digital trust and verification as foundational infrastructure, like how we view payment rails or network security, rather than as optional compliance tooling.
At PPJV, we have seen what happens when trust is embedded directly into payments infrastructure. When it is built in rather than bolted on, innovation accelerates and risk decreases. Digital identity belongs in that same category.
The report also highlights Canada’s opportunity to lead globally by aligning strong regulation with practical, interoperable digital trust systems. That positioning matters as payments, data, and identity increasingly cross borders.
Final Thought
Payments has always been about trust moving at the speed of commerce.
Plastic cards were a breakthrough in their time. Digital wallets came next. Digital identity, paired with open banking, is the logical progression.
If we get this right, physical ID becomes a backup, not a dependency. Verification becomes invisible. Trust becomes something we design for, not something we slow people down to prove.
That is a future worth building.