Vouchsafe is now in beta

This week we’re unveiling Vouchsafe. Here’s why it’s a game-changer for people who need to prove their identity to use products and services—and for the organisations that provide them.

Today we’re ready to unveil Vouchsafe, a new and better way to prove your identity. It opens up identity verification to everyone, including the 1 in 5 people who don’t have access to basic forms of ID like a passport or driving licence.

Vouchsafe is built on the principle that your identity can be confirmed by someone you trust. 

You don’t need to rely on old fashioned, expensive paper documents. It’s cheaper, faster and it reduces the risk of fraud.  

It means services can be opened up to people who don’t currently have a reliable way to identify themselves. And it will help those that have a limited credit history too.

When you plug Vouchsafe into your service, you open it up to millions more potential customers and users in the UK alone. It makes your services more accessible and more profitable.

You can see it in action in this video:

Vouchsafe helps ordinary people

When we start to explain Vouchsafe, people tend to assume it’s only for people at society’s fringes. Of course that’s part of the story, and one of our driving motivations for building it in the first place. 

But Vouchsafe is actually much bigger than that. It helps people at the fringes, towards the fringes, or people in any number of everyday scenarios. Some examples …

Louise

We spoke to “Louise” during our research. She finds it really hard to prove her identity. She doesn’t have her birth certificate. It was destroyed by her violent ex-partner when she left him. This is an experience all too common among survivors of domestic abuse. 

As a mum on universal credit, she has been priced out of getting a passport. It’s about £108 including postage. She’s trying to get a provisional driving licence so she’s going to have to buy a new birth certificate, then apply by post. All together that’s another £65.

She also has to find someone in a specific profession to countersign her application. 

When she called her GP surgery, they told her it would cost £20. She doesn’t know anyone else in any of the other roles. The whole thing has been immensely stressful for her. 

Vouchsafe is for people like Louise.

Emily

“Emily” was another person we spoke to in our research. She’s struggling to prove her identity to a solicitor. She’s being written into her Dad’s will, but she has no way to prove who she is. 

She can’t get a driving licence or a passport because she can’t get a copy of her birth certificate.  She can’t get a copy of her birth certificate because no one knows how to spell her middle name.

You see, her mum can’t read or write, so no one knows how her middle name was first recorded. 

This might sound like a niche problem. You might feel quite disconnected from it. You might think that it’s something other people deal with. But Emily is actually my sister. I don’t identify as being on society’s fringes.

Vouchsafe is for people like Emily.

Vouchsafe is for everyone

Everyone knows someone like Louise and someone like Emily, even if they don’t realise it. But there are any number of scenarios we could have described. People moving to the UK from overseas. People who have never driven and never travelled. Maybe you can’t remember where you put your passport temporarily. Vouchsafe is for you as well.

In Vouchsafe, we’re creating a world where everyone can prove their identity because everyone knows someone who can vouch for them. It’s not like countersigning a passport. You don’t need to be in a special profession to vouch for someone.

We’ve added the necessary checks to allow almost anyone in the world to vouch for someone, or be vouched for.

Vouchsafe is for business as well as the public and third sector

When we talk about Vouchsafe, people sometimes think that it’s only to help people use essential services. Again, that’s a big part of our motivation for making it. And again, that’s far from the whole story.

Vouchsafe can help any business or organisation that needs to be sure of the identity of its customers and users. It can help them reach the 1 in 5 that struggle to prove their identity. 

That’s around 11 million people in the UK and a billion worldwide. That’s a lot of potential customers to turn away, and a lot of people to lock out of services they should have access to.

Solving this problem is a great way to provide more effective public services at a reduced cost. If users can’t access vital services when they need them, they will often end up needing labour-intensive and expensive crisis care down the line.

Vouchsafe will soon be making a difference

Vouchsafe will be integrated with ScotAccount this summer. That means 1 million people in Scotland will find it much easier to access vital public services

But this is just the beginning, and the figures bear repeating: 11 million people in the UK struggle to use products and services because they lack these basic forms of ID. That number rises to 1 billion worldwide.

Vouchsafe is the answer to that problem. It will help you onboard 25% more customers, users, employees or volunteers.

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Ready to onboard 25% more customers? Visit vouchsafe.id to join the waitlist.