SeIn

In an increasingly digitized and networked society, trustworthy electronic business processes between companies, public authorities and citizens are of ever greater importance. Many such business processes are based on proof of identity of both natural and legal persons. However, there are major limitations to all current identification methods such as Post-Ident, Video-Ident or ID card-Ident. These are caused, for example, by the need for special hardware, high abort rates or long waiting times due to intermediate steps that have to be carried out manually. The SeIn project aims to simplify and accelerate the identification of natural persons and legal entities in the digital EU single market and to make it cheaper.

Goals and Procedure

The SeIn project (Abbr: fast electronic proof of identity; German: schneller elektronischer Identitätsnachweis) aims to create the technical and legal basis for a new type of secure and trustworthy online proof of identity. In order to achieve a “substantial” level of trust, the project makes use of a new payment guideline in online banking, according to which banks must now also offer programming interfaces for third parties (access-to-account interface). SeIn starts here and wants to use the structures already existing in online banking for the new identification solution. To this end, the project analyzes the programming interfaces of various banks and investigates how they can be used for identity verification. The results will then be used to develop software components that enable customers with normal online banking accounts to use the identification solution developed in the project.

Project Runtime10/2020 – 09/2022
Funding BodyFederal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Involved PartnersDarmstadt University of Applied Sciences
My RoleLead for Networks and IT Infrastructure
My Project ParticipationSince 11/2021

Innovations and Perspectives

A unique selling point of the solution to be developed in SeIn will be its high level of user-friendliness combined with the fact that no identity data is stored. The planned real-time proof of identity should also contribute to a significant acceleration and optimization of business processes. Online transactions can be carried out with a higher degree of automation with the help of the SeIn solution, which not only improves the customer experience but also replaces manual processes. Thus, the SeIn solution helps to reduce process costs, increase revenue (improving conversion rate) and improve service and master data quality.

The solution can be used, for example, by public authorities and administrations, providers of FSK18 offers and prepaid telephone providers.
The new identification solution developed in SeIn will potentially be deployable throughout the EU.

Project website: https://www.digital-ident.de.