Credit card adopted for personal identification
By Yoon Sung-won
Credit cards will replace accredited certificate keys or text message verification for online personal identification, according to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), Tuesday.
The KCC said it will start testing credit cards as replacements of resident registration numbers this month. It aims at launching the service in August.
“We are currently reviewing business partner candidates for this test service project. We will announce our partner within this month,” a KCC official said. “We will test-run the service between March and April, and finalize the partner designation by July.”
In this service, users can tag a credit card in their name to a smartphone that supports the near-field communication (NFC) technology. Once the handset recognizes the credit card information, it compares the information to the data stored at the server of the credit card company to verify the card holder’s resident registration number.
The new online personal identification based on credit card information is expected to particularly benefit workers and students sojourning overseas because they can use the service regardless of their location so long as they keep a credit card in their own name.
The government has been repeatedly urged to scrap the requirement of old personal identification measures such as the public certificate keys as they were complicated to use. Users have had to install multiple plug-ins for web browsers to use such measures. Although alternative measures such as text message verification and i-PIN certificates have been introduced, they were available only for those who have a telecom service accounts in Korea.
Replacement for the resident registration number is expected to boost convenience in using mobile and online services while reducing the risks of personal information leaks.
The credit card personal identification technology has also faced obstacles for the government to introduce because it is based on the users’ resident registration numbers. But this technology has been expedited after a Korean company named Hankook NFC filed a petition with the Office for Government Policy Coordination last year. The company won a mediation plan from the government for deregulation.
The KCC said it also plans to release a smartphone application service that provides personal identification by entering a password.