Modern identity cards

Bulgaria is hopefully about to start working on a new identity system for its citizens. I was just thinking, can’t it just use credit cards?

So currently Bulgarian identity cards are nothing special just the normal run-of-the mill plastic cards. The only thing I could say about them is that they are pretty darn durable.

There was a referendum here recently, about whether or not we need electronic government, and it turned out positive.

So now that it needs to be implemented we will need a new system to identify all the people in the country so they can vote and otherwise participate in that electronic government.

I had a crazy idea though, isn’t there already a globally accepted, battle tested, hardened and ubiquitous system for identifying people? Yup — credit cards. Of course they have their flaws, but generally they are way better at online security than most other identity systems out there.

I imagine it would be way way cheaper to just buy off the shelf software and hardware for printing, verifying, fraud prevention and all the other stuff that goes into identity management. And the great thing is that as the tech advances we could get continuous updates on security and convenience. Imagine going to the court and identifying yourself with Apple Pay?

But this can go so much deeper though, imagine if there was an actual bank account associated with that credit card, provided by the Bulgarian government, or just a normal bank account? You could charge the amount due for any government work through that bank account, you can pay your taxes or fines, pay for post or even receive your pension there. This could make the government a full fledged participator in the world normal people already live in, without any need for investing in new technology.

Also most people already know how credit cards work, or if they don’t there are extensive information about this everywhere, and a lot of people trained in helping people deal with this technology.

Its just an idea.