Once smart cards, digital credentials, and biometric authentication are put together, the user gets an experience that just feels seamless and actually builds trust. Lalit Agarwal, Director, ID Consulting, a subsidiary of Alankit Limited exclusively explains to Rajneesh De, Group Editor, APAC Media & CXO Media that if one wants AI to actually work well here, one should not rely on just one signal, but combine facial recognition with voice patterns or behavioral biometrics that gives much better accuracy.
As digital identities become the foundation of public services, financial transactions, and enterprise access, what are the biggest security and governance challenges organizations in the APAC region need to address to build trusted digital identity ecosystems?
Honestly, the biggest problem right now is that fraud has gotten smarter than our defenses. Deepfakes, synthetic identities, AI powered phishing, these are all sophisticated enough to get past the biometric and verification checks most organizations still rely on. Then there’s the data itself.
Every time you store personal information to verify someone’s identity, you are creating a target, and a breach there can be devastating. And even before you get to any of that, just securing and managing identity architecture day to day is genuinely hard operationally. So it is not one challenge, it is fraud, data exposure, and operational complexity all hitting at once.
With digital payments witnessing unprecedented growth across India and the wider APAC region, how should businesses strengthen payment security to combat sophisticated fraud, identity theft, and emerging cyber threats without compromising customer experience?
I would say the answer is not to add more steps for the customer, it is to use smarter technology underneath. Advanced biometrics, AI driven multi factor authentication, hardware-based verification like FIDO2 passkeys, this is where the real fight against identity theft happens. Done right, the customer barely notices anything different, but the fraud gets stopped before it happens.
Governments and enterprises are increasingly adopting cloud-based identity issuance and credential management solutions. How do you see this shift transforming identity lifecycle management, and what best practices should organizations follow during this transition?
What has changed with cloud-based issuance is that a credential is not a onetime thing anymore, it is ongoing. You can provision it digitally and update it in real time, so it becomes this living asset instead of something static. And practically speaking, organizations do not need to build out massive on-premise infrastructure anymore either. You can manage credentials across multiple locations through the cloud, which just makes the whole thing more flexible.
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly reshaping fraud detection and cybersecurity. In your view, how can AI be effectively integrated into identity verification and secure issuance systems while ensuring privacy, compliance, and responsible use of customer data?
If you want AI to actually work well here, do not rely on just one signal, combine facial recognition with voice patterns or behavioral biometrics. That gets you much better accuracy. But the privacy piece matters just as much. Run the biometric scan locally on the phone itself rather than pushing raw biometric data up to the cloud. That’s really the difference between doing this responsibly and doing it carelessly.
As sectors such as banking, healthcare, education, and government accelerate their digital transformation journeys, what role will secure identity technologies—including smart cards, digital credentials, and biometric authentication—play in enabling trusted and resilient digital ecosystems?
When you put smart cards, digital credentials, and biometric authentication together, you get an experience that just feels seamless to the user. And that seamlessness is what actually builds trust. People adopt what they trust, so whether it is a bank or a government programme, this is what drives a bigger, more engaged user base.
Looking ahead, what are the key trends you believe will define the future of digital identity and payment security in the APAC region over the next three to five years, and how should enterprises prepare for this evolving landscape?
A few things are going to define the next few years. Decentralized digital identity is coming. Biometrics are moving away from onetime static checks toward continuous, behavior-based analysis. Physical and digital identity are converging into one thing. And passwordless is becoming the default, not the exception. If I were advising enterprises, I would tell them to start adopting phishing resistant MFA and FIDO2 now, and not to tip too far into digital without keeping their physical identity infrastructure solid too.
What are the key use cases for each of the services Alankit offers across its portfolio?
We work across financial institutions, education, and government, handling both physical and digital identity needs for them. What makes that possible is a mix of strong technical and operational expertise on our end, plus the OEM relationships we’ve built over time. That combination is really what lets us deliver identity programmes clients can trust.
What are the key pillars of Alankit is go-to-market (GTM) strategy?
There are really four things we lean on. We have a multi-location presence, so we can actually show up and support clients onsite. We’ve built strong customer credentials over the years. Our financial credentials are solid too. And we carry a wide enough range of products that we can meet different requirements across pretty much any industry vertical.
