Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Hakan Nordfjell, Senior VP of eBanking and eCommerce at Gemalto (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: There’s definitely the identity data that we have a big fiasco around at the moment. More broadly, Facebook is sitting on top of huge amounts of data. Google is sitting on top of huge amounts of data. They’re basically using that data without the consumers having any say in the matter on how that data gets used.

Hakan Nordfjell: Exactly. End consumers don’t have a clue. In some sense, they should have the option to know better about it. As you said, we are building up digital profiles on end users and we have massive amount of data. If that is being breached, I think we might see stronger regulations coming.

If you are getting regulated a lot, you will also have a harder time to make it easier for end users to access service. If I know a lot about the end user and I protect the data and use it in a wise way, I might make the onboarding for new services easier because I know more about the end user. I might be able to provide an easier access to banks or banking accounts because I know the end user is coming there.

If I have no access to end user data, I am blind. If I’m blind, I need to put up security measures. The friction from end users will be quite high to enter into new services. In some sense, end users want to know more about how their digital profiles are being used and want to have some control over it.

Sramana Mitra: Also, there are question marks around who’s monetizing the data and how. Today we are using it for free. The service gets to use the data. You could flip that where we pay to use the service. Then the data belongs to us. We decide what kind of monetization we want to take out of that.

Hakan Nordfjell: Exactly. It will not come by itself.

Sramana Mitra: It would need regulation I think.

Hakan Nordfjell: If you leave it to the end user right now, would you pay to have full control of your digital life? Some people would. To see it on a massive scale, we need some regulation. Then it’s not a bad thing. If an end consumer would have more say, I might accept that it is harder for me to do direct onboarding to new services because I have control over my digital identity.

If I open access to it, they could verify me. I’m speaking about it from a security point of view — access to the banking accounts, access to the government services, and onboarding to new services.

Sramana Mitra: I think I have your perspective. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Hakan Nordfjell, Senior VP of eBanking and eCommerce at Gemalto
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