Today the Mobile Identity Programme publishes its latest in-depth case study on Mobile-ID in Estonia, a mobile signature solution which enables Estonian citizens to conduct a broad range of services and transactions either online or from their mobile. Citizens and residents with Mobile-ID can access private health records, register a business, declare their taxes and sign legal contracts all through the legally binding PKI-based signature functionality of their SIM card.
Mobile-ID (Mobiil-ID) was launched in 2007 by the mobile operator EMT, and later extended to the two other leading operators Elisa and Tele2, as an expansion of this technically advanced nation’s digital ID scheme. Uptake of Mobile-ID by businesses and consumers has increased rapidly over the past year due to a number of specific factors, which together indicate a key role for mobile operators in today’s growing online and digital landscape. As a result, policy makers around the world travel to Estonia hoping to learn from and replicate the country’s successful digital infrastructure which places identity, authorisation and access securely and conveniently back – via mobile – into the hands of its citizens.
The success of Estonia’s Mobile-ID rests on a number of important learnings which provide useful insights for operators looking to implement similar services in their market:
- The Mobile-ID service was originally built and launched by EMT, which in 2009 made its platform available to the country’s other operators, Elisa and Tele2. This was recognised as key to driving scale among users and encouraging service providers to join the service. Prior to this point, investment in advertising campaigns was low due to the narrow availability of the service; equally, government and public services authorities could only begin to advertise and actively encourage use of the Mobile-ID services once it was available from multiple operators.
- Contrary to popular assumption, uptake of Mobile-ID in Estonia has been very much private-sector driven. While adoption of the service was slow during its initial stages, with around 40,000 Mobile-ID users recorded as of March 2013, uptake of Mobile-ID has been increasing rapidly in recent months due to rising smartphone penetration and increasing consumer demand for services that are directly accessible via their mobile device. Particularly appealing to users is the elimination of the need for a smartcard reader for the e-ID card – the national ID smartcard which is currently held by the majority of Estonian citizens and which provides similar PKI-based functionality through the smartchip and PIN (similar to a bank card). As a result, there has been an explosion in the number of businesses rushing to meet this demand by directing more and more of their services through the mobile channel.
- In addition to the potential increase in revenue generation, businesses are also recognising the significant role that Mobile-ID also plays in terms of cost reduction by eliminating paper processes and the time required for processing contracts, which can cost businesses up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. The operators have noted a strong increase in corporate businesses signing their employees up to the service en-masse in order to use Mobile-ID for internal and B2B functions.
- Unlike in neighbouring Finland, banks in Estonia were among the first entities to adopt Mobile-ID, and have continued to be some of the product’s most active proponents. One bank attributes significant increase in transactions using its mobile banking app to Mobile ID: 26% of its mobile banking customers use Mobile ID and make up 38% of logins. Currently, Mobile-ID can be used with over 300 organisations in both the private and public sector, ranging from electronic banking, applying for a driver’s license, entering or accessing academic essay writing service grades at University or changing a pension plan, all through the electronic signature function of the mobile which holds legal equivalence to a wet signature. In 2011, the country was the first in the world to allow m-Voting in the national Parliamentary elections, with 3% of all votes conducted via mobile.[1]
- Easing the process of registration for users was an important barrier to overcome. The system is based on a specialised Mobile-ID compliant SIM card, which the customer must request from the mobile phone operator. Private keys are stored on the SIM card along with a small application for authentication and signing. Customers can now register for the service and activate the Mobile-ID certificates[2] on their SIM card via the web page of the Police and Border Control using their existing national ID-card credentials.
Nevertheless, despite increasing uptake of Mobile-ID across many sectors, some challenges still remain to the wide-scale adoption of the service. Primarily, lack of awareness of Mobile-ID among both consumers and businesses, as well as attempts by conservative political groups to distort public conceptions of Mobile-ID as lacking in the sufficient levels of security for mobile voting, continue to hinder mass adoption. As a result, there has been increased commitment by the operators and from the government to dedicate more attention to raising awareness of Mobile-ID and its benefits, as well as clarifying misconceptions regarding the perceived complexity of Mobile-ID compared to existing digital or ‘traditional’ research papers
Discussions are also underway to allow cross-border acceptance of mobile signature in neighbouring countries following the acceptance of citizen-ID based digital certificates for public services and business procedures. Since 2011, citizens of Belgium, Portugal, Lithuania and Finland can access state websites, sign contracts and conduct business online in Estonia using the national ID-card of their originating country, but not yet on Mobile-ID. The three Estonian operators believe that initiatives such as these will be central to driving further uptake and scale of Mobile-ID in future.
Read about the case study in full and find out more about the Mobile Identity Programme by visiting our Resources page.