Acxiom Releases Online Identity Card

Acxiom, a provider of interactive marketing and risk mitigation services, announced a beta offering for retail merchants, corporations, financial institutions and other organizations that wish to offer a privately branded identity card to their customers.

"Businesses should benefit with a decrease in internal consumer authentication and fraud detection costs if they encourage their customers to adopt a digital identity card," says Tim Christin, senior VP of Acxiom's risk mitigation division. "And in turn, their customers should benefit by the streamlined online experience with a single sign-on system, the elimination of user names and passwords, and the reduced risk of identity fraud."

A digital identity card allows consumers to establish online accounts and log in to existing accounts with an encrypted identity that is stored on the consumer's personal computer. This is the digital equivalent of a privately branded identity card that is typically carried in a person's wallet.

Acxiom said the identity cards are a secure way for consumers to control their personal data and identity when conducting Internet shopping, online financial transactions, and other activities that require disclosure of personal information.

A business can allow patrons to apply for the identity card by simply logging on to the business's website. The consumer is prompted to answer a series of authentication questions that validate the user's identity. After the user's identity is authenticated and validated, the digital identity card is activated for storage on the consumer's personal computer.

The consumer is then ready to click in to a website that accepts the identity card without entering user names/passwords or filling out time-consuming registration forms. Access is granted to secure sites that have agreed to accept the identity cards by authenticating consumers without requesting personal data or account numbers. Sites that accept the cards will display a purple "i" symbol noting the "identity card is accepted here."

The identity card uses Acxiom's authentication technology to verify in real time that the user is who he says he is, is not a known fraudster, and does not raise other high-risk security flags, the company noted in a release.

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