Digital Identity Buzz: Passwordless, Identity Wallets & Digital Money with Heather Flanagan, Spherical Cow Consulting and David Birch, 15Mb

Let's talk about digital identity with Heather Flanagan, Principal at Spherical Cow Consulting and David Birch, Principal at 15 Mb, author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services. This is the 100th episode of Let’s Talk about Digital Identity – in this special episode two of our most popular guests, Heather Flanagan and David Birch, rejoined the podcast to explore what is exciting them in passwordless, identity wallets and digital money. [Transcript below] "Passwords have got to go. As we're moving to passkeys, I think there's always room for improvement on - even on them. If nothing else, focusing a little bit more on the user experience so that people will have a better understanding of what this means." Heather Flanagan, Principal at Spherical Cow Consulting and choreographer for Identity Flash Mob, comes from a position that the Internet is led by people, powered by words, and inspired by technology. She has been involved in leadership roles with some of the most technical, volunteer-driven organisations on the Internet, including IDPro as Principal Editor, the IETF, the IAB, and the IRTF as RFC Series Editor, ICANN as Technical Writer, and REFEDS as Coordinator, just to name a few. If there is work going on to develop new Internet standards, or discussions around the future of digital identity, she is interested in engaging in that work. Listen Episode 74, where Heather discusses Making Identity Easy for Everyone or connect with Heather on LinkedIn. “The thing that's broken in digital money at the moment, is identity, not the payment bit.” David G.W Birch is an author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services. Principal at 15Mb, his advisory company, he is Global Ambassador for the secure electronic transactions consultancy, Consult Hyperion, Fintech Ambassador for Digital Jersey and Non-Executive Chair at Digiseq Ltd. He is an internationally-recognised thought leader in digital identity and digital money. Ranked one of the top 100 fintech influencers for 2021, previously named one of the global top 15 favourite sources of business information by Wired magazine and one of the top ten most influential voices in banking by Financial Brand, he created one of the top 25 “must read” financial IT blogs and was found by PR Daily to be one of the top ten Twitter accounts followed by innovators (along with Bill Gates and Richard Branson). His latest book “The Currency Cold War—Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony” (published in May 2020) “paints a fascinating and stimulating picture of the future of the world of digital payments and its possible impact on the wider global and economic orders” – Philip Middleton, OMFIF Digital Monetary Institute. His previous book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From money we understand to money that understands us” was published in June 2017 with a foreword by Andrew Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England. The LSE Review of Books said the book should be “widely read by graduate students of finance, financial law and related topics as well as policy makers involved in financial regulation”.  The London Review of Books called his earlier book “Identity is the New Money” fresh, original, wide-ranging and “the best book on general issues around new forms of money”. More information is available at dgwbirch.com and you can follow him @dgwbirch on X. Listen to Episode 75 with David discussing Digital Currencies or connect with David on LinkedIn. We’ll be continuing this conversation on X using #LTADI – join us @ubisecure! Go to @Ubisecure on YouTube to watch the video transcript for episode 100. Podcast transcript Oscar Santolalla: This is episode number 100 of Let’s Talk About Digital Identity. And for this special occasion, we have invited back Heather Flanagan, and David Birch. Let’s Talk About Digital Identity, the podcast connecting identity and business. I am your host, Oscar Santolalla.