So this is changing very, very quick, especially during or after the pandemic.

The digitalization of the identity has been accelerated in a way that not only financial institutions

but every other business will need to identify the consumer or the person before they do any transaction.

When I was growing up in South Africa, they would issue you with your National ID booklet at 16.

Since we can only vote and drive and drink from 18, it was the first step on the path to becoming an official adult.

Over time, they rolled out a separate driver's license card and I believe in the last few years

they rolled out a new, more secure identity card. But the fact is that for a long, long time,

if you were careful, or as is the case with me, just lucky, you're most important identity document.

The one you had to use for any official government business showed a snapshot you probably had taken

in a local pharmacy at 16. I used to tell the story and use my dad as an example who well into his 50s,

maybe even his 60s, had an ID card with a picture of himself at about 19,

sun-casted and with long curly hair down to his shoulders. But now I realise that my own picture

is about 25 years old and I too don't have quite the head of hair I once did.

And that was all right when it was just been used for things like voting every few years, but

the fact is in our modern life, it's simply not a document that's fit for purpose.

And neither is the number that it represents. On the one hand, having an identity number makes

digital identities easier in that we can match everybody to a single match key, but if anything

goes wrong, there's no way to get a new number, so one's compromised, always compromised.

And this is not a situation unique to South Africa. In Copenhagen, my identity card didn't have a

photo at all, just the number. And in Hong Kong, while we updated the photo from time to time,

the static number is a static number. And even private businesses weren't all that much better.

A few years ago, I went into a bank branch to close some accounts open when I had just left

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