Decentralized Identity: Civic CEO Vinny Lingham
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Today’s show zeroes in on the most foundational question facing us all, not only in financial innovation but in our whole new world of ubiquitous data. That challenge is, how can we gain the benefits of this huge new universe of digital information, and at the same time, prevent it from hurting us. My very thoughtful guest on this dilemma is Vinny Lingham, CEO of Civic Technologies.
Vinny’s story is fascinating. A star on Shark Tank South Africa, he immigrated from that country to Silicon Valley about a decade ago. In the US he founded and built successful startups in the payments space, and then launched Civic to develop blockchain solutions for the burgeoning problem of online identity fraud. That effort brought him to focusing on new technologies for identity verification, such as zero-knowledge proof. It also brought him to a philosophy about identity and personal data, which is that we need a decentralized system in which our data is controlled not by governments or companies, but by us.
As our regular listeners know, zero-knowledge proof is one of several emerging tools that fall under the banner of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies, or PET’s. These were the main focus of last summer’s Financial Conduct Authority tech sprint on anti-money laundering in London (the one that my new nonprofit, AIR, helped with by organizing a Washington DC satellite site, which we talked about recently in our 100th episode). The FCA sprint -- a regulatory hackathon -- explored the question of whether PET’s could enable widespread sharing of information to combat financial crime by finding data typologies, while keeping personal data private. AML is a specific use case for this, but as Vinny explains, the same tools offer potential solutions across the spectrum of privacy challenges. Instead of handing our full credentials over to everyone who needs to verify something about us, we should be able instead to provide a simple, trusted electronic confirmation that we are who we claim to be, or that we are, say, old enough to buy alcohol. As an example, Vinney cites the fact that Civic can enable vending machines to dispense alcohol or tobacco in compliance with legal limits, with no human present to review the buyer’s identity information.
We covered some of these same topics on our show with Greg Kidd of globaliD and, in India, our show with Sanjay Jain.
Digital identity, decentralized and controlled by the individual, could be the master key that unlocks solutions to a whole range of problems that look nearly unsolvable today. It could widen financial access by making it easy for companies to meet Know-Your-Customer requirements for AML. It could reduce vulnerability to hacking and cyber-insecurity, by not building centralized data “honey pots” that attract attackers -- because the information would be distributed over people’s own devices. It could reduce fraud and financial crime by making it much harder to steal people’s identifying information. And it could reduce misuse of information by companies that currently may collect, and use, more information than is needed to perform their service to the customer, and more than the customer wants them to have.
In our conversation, Vinny shares his thinking on these challenges, on what it takes to build this kind of company, and also on the key regulatory issues in the space.
I know you’ll enjoy my conversation with Civic CEO Vinny Lingham.
Links:
https://twitter.com/VinnyLingham
Onfido's AI-powered identity verification
Barefoot Innovation podcast with Greg Kidd
Barefoot Innovation podcast with Sanjay Jain
More on Vinny:
Vinny Lingham is a well- recognized South African Internet entrepreneur who, among other things, is the star of Shark Tank in South Africa. He immigrated to California a decade ago and is now co-founder and CEO of Civic, a startup that is helping lead a global digital identity revolution. Civic is spearheading the development of an ecosystem that is designed to facilitate on-demand, secure, and low-cost access to identity verification services via the blockchain.
Prior to Civic, Vinny was the co-founder and CEO of Gyft, a mobile gift card company that started in 2012 with backing from Google Ventures. Within 2 years, Gyft quickly become the leading player in the space and was acquired by global payments giant, First Data Corporation in 2014, for over $50m.
Vinny is an active technology investor primarily in Silicon Valley, focusing on Bitcoin & Blockchain projects in particular. He also partnered with one of his previous co-founders to establish an investment fund in South Africa, called Newtown Partners, where he has led early stage investments into successful and notable startups such as Sweep South and Augmentors. Currently, Vinny is a Shark on Shark Tank South Africa, has also appeared as a Dragon on the South African edition of Dragon’s Den, the longest running UK investment reality show, along with being an "Angel" in the non-profit spinoff of Undercover Boss -- National Geographic's Undercover Angel. He is a co-author of “I’m In: Essential Advice for Entrepreneurs.”
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We have great episodes coming up. We will have a show with Greta Bull, who leads C-GAP for the World Bank. We recorded a show at the recent University of Michigan/Gates Foundation conference on the Future of the Central Bank, with Michael Barr and Adrienne Harris. I talked with Lamine Zarrad, CEO and Founder of the fintech startup Joust. I talked with Jeff Dyer of BYU about the book he most recently co-authored, Innovation Capital. We recorded a show at Money 2020 with Richard Teng of Abu Dhabi Global Market. And we have special shows coming up with several US regulatory agency heads and with Congressman Bill Foster.
Meanwhile my fall “world tour” for this year is well underway. I was in Abu Dhabi not long ago. Last week I was at Money 2020, which was spectacular. I think we had several hundred regulators there, for the first time, including three agency heads on the main stage -- be sure to come next year!
Now I’m in Tokyo for the Honest Conference on AI for Regtech and a range of meetings. Next I’ll be heading on to Singapore in a few days for the amazing Fintech Festival of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, November 11-15. I may go to Rome later this month. In December I’ll be at the ABA Financial Crimes conference in Washington, sharing the stage on AI with Gene Ludwig and Gary Shiffman. And then I’ll be at the Paris Fintech Forum in January.
Having given up on cloning myself, I fortunately am now able to share this frantic speaking circuit with my colleague at AIR, David Ehrich. David will be serving as a judge at FINRA’s exciting Build-a-thon at MIT this month. He’ll be at the FDATA meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland. And he’ll also be speaking in New York at Source Media’s Regtech conference, which is always one of the best. Come to the show notes for more details on all of it, and David and I will hope to see you along the way!
Remember, if you’re interested in booking me to speak to your group, contact jay@provokemanagement.com.
The views and opinions expressed during the Barefoot Innovation podcast series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Barefoot Innovation Group and its employees. Barefoot Innovation Group does not verify for accuracy the information contained in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast series is to educate and inform.