Airside Joins Forces with Onfido
I am thrilled to announce that Airside has been acquired by Onfido. As a founder, from the very first day and through the trials and tribulation of start-up life, visions of what would come next were always in the back of my mind. Being brought into the Onfido family offers a wonderful opportunity for us to continue our journey and broaden our reach. This strategic merger brings together our cutting-edge technologies and passionate teams. Airside shares the same values as Onfido, who are simplifying digital identity for everyone.
Onfido is a global leader in identity verification technology, serving the biggest names in global financial services. Airside is the leading innovator in user-controller digital identity, providing better experiences to millions of travelers on the world’s largest airlines. Together, we can do things we could have never done alone. In fact, together, we can do things no one else in the world can do. We are going to turn the world of digital identity on its head.
The Challenges of Digital Identity
I think we can agree that legacy identity systems are broken. Big Tech holds vast amounts of your data. Credit bureaus make decisions about your finances. Fraudsters possess increasingly sophisticated tools to exploit identity breadcrumbs strewn about. The regulatory and legal landscape is becoming more complicated and costly.
As individuals, we find ourselves caught in the middle. Proving our identity is a significant part of establishing that we have a right to access wanted and needed goods, services and experiences. Whether it’s opening a bank account, going through airport security, or renting a car we are constantly asked to prove who we are. These outdated and repetitive identity checks not only waste time, but increase our own risk of being victimized. Our online experiences, affiliations, and credentials are scattered and can be pieced together by unknown entities. Without our control, these breadcrumbs can be used against us either to gain our trust or mimic our identity.
The way we currently prove our identities was not built for our increasingly digital and privacy-conscious world. Today, the way we treat our digital identities is equivalent to leaving our physical wallets on a park bench outside a casino. Sadly, most people don’t believe there is another option.
It’s time for a change.
Embracing the Future
Airside has been at the forefront of privacy-based technology, returning control back to the consumer with easy consent-driven, time-bound sharing protocols. When we built the beloved Mobile Passport App, millions of people trusted us with their passport data to allow them to skip the line and speed through U.S. customs. In turn, we built a system where we were completely blind to the data we were processing. We could not mine it, sell it or lose it.
As the demand for digital identity grows with more mDLs and eIDs becoming available, so does the need for robust, efficient, and user-controlled mechanisms. In bringing Airside and Onfido together, we aim to create fast and secure digital identity experiences that empower individuals to verify their identities once, and share them anywhere.
The Airside Digital Identity App, now powered by Onfido, is more than a wallet. It’s a space to regain control of your true digital identity, keeping it in your hands. We want you to be in control of your digital identity, not your operating system, not an unknown server, not big corporate hands, and definitely not in our hands. It is our work now to expand our services to enhance more points along your day-to-day journey, eliminating silos and divisions imposed by Big Tech and Big Corp.
As we come into what AAA is describing as the “summer travel season [that] could be one for the record books” with Memorial Day weekend in the U.S., I hope that you find that this vision is already becoming a reality. TSA continues to invest in second generation Credential Authentication Technology (CAT-2) systems to improve and automate identity verification with deployments expected at thousands of airports nationwide. We’re proud to partner with American Airlines to improve the airline traveler experience by using your mobile ID in the Airside Digital Identity App at TSA PreCheck® to speed through airport security checkpoints, such as at my hometown airport Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA).
That’s just the beginning of this new chapter. Airside’s journey with Onfido will revolutionize digital identity, empower individuals, and foster trusted connections in the digital world. Please take a look at what our shared vision looks like and join us on June 21 for a live webinar with me and Mike Tuchen, CEO of Onfido.
