
MasterCard-Branded National eID Card Launched in Nigeria - fredbrown
http://www.zdnet.com/nigeria-launches-new-biometric-id-card-brought-to-you-by-mastercard-7000033133/
======
vicpara
This is a big thing. Mastercard is a global company. In Nigeria, a country
that has nothing to loose and some small advantages to gain this may seem like
a no brainer. However, if this new tech proves itself reliable enough I expect
it to be pushed to many more countries. Think about it. A BANK will OWN your
biometric data (10 fingerprints, iris signature, facial signature).
Everything. And this is not a governmental entity. Nigeria, as a poor country,
cannot challenge the tech brough by Mastercard.

An then what would be the next step? No more cash payments? If you pay by cash
the whole system would flag you as potential threat?

Plus, is there any prove that access to credit for really poor people is
actually creating wealth ? This is the modern slavery and anyone who has
credit in west either for education or commercial purpose has felt on its own
skin what means to work for paying up the debt.

God help us all!

~~~
rhodri
Don't confuse consumer credit – which is taking out loans in order to buy
goods like toasters that will _decrease_ in value – from a business loan –
which is a bet that you can _add value_ to what you buy with the loan, and
thus earn enough to pay it back (and more, hopefully).

Having a quick look around, I found this blog post from Kiva who helped
pioneer microlending in the developing world. The answer seems to be "yes, but
credit isn't enough to turn anyone into an entrepreneur":
[http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/fellowsblog/2013/03/22/how-
effec...](http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/fellowsblog/2013/03/22/how-effective-is-
microcredit-really)

As a bit of a rant: the West is generally overburdened with consumer credit.
People panic when the value of their house goes below that of their mortgage,
which is called negative equity. But (almost) every consumer credit agreement
leads to this negative equity. It's mad.

~~~
schoen
What a useful way of putting it.

Can you think of an institutional or cultural way to get people in the West
out of some of their consumer credit traps? I don't think the lenders are
going to help!

~~~
schoen
I wonder if this got downvoted because someone read it as sarcastic. It wasn't
meant to be so; I thought the parent comment was useful and I was wondering
how to change the culture around consumer lending, which I agree has got a lot
of people trapped (or at least burning a lot of their income on interest
payments and fees).

------
vidarh
While this is a bit strange when issued as a government ID, the cards seem
familiar to me: In Norway, pretty much all debit cards - including ones with
VISA and Mastercard - have picture ids on the back that are valid in most
instances a formal government id would be, and it's the primary id document
for a substantial percentage of people.

It caused a few amusing episodes when I first moved to the UK and still had my
Norwegian accounts, when shop clerks would look at me with a puzzled look,
wondering why in the world I tried paying with an id card - until I pointed
out the VISA logo.

------
TomGullen
So MasterCard have in one swoop pretty much monopolised the entire payments
industry of an entire country? Helping the unbanked is probably a good thing
(probably) but I wonder how expensive these cards will be, or will become.

I personally would hate the idea of having a "Mastercard" branded ID card or
passport here in the UK. Maybe in Nigeria it's the lesser of two evils,
perhaps not.

~~~
true_religion
Why do you think its a monopoly?

~~~
serf
it may not be one currently, but if an entire population is forced to use an
ID from a private company, and then that company provides incentive for other
services formed around the ID (which was forced), it begins rapidly
approaching monopoly status.

~~~
dragonwriter
The first step is itself a monopoly, leveraging it to other products is one of
the dangers that an existing monopoly opens up.

------
declan
Here's an excerpt from the Mastercard press release with a few more details:

"MasterCard has pioneered large scale card schemes that combine biometric
functionality with electronic payments and we want to capitalize on their
experience... enrollment process involves the recording of an individual’s
demographic data and biometric data (capture of 10 fingerprints, facial
picture and digital signature)..." [http://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-
releases/mastercard-to-...](http://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-
releases/mastercard-to-power-nigerian-identity-card-program/)

I wonder how Americans would feel if the U.S. government teamed up with
Mastercard, devised a similar biometric ID card -- and required all U.S.
citizens to obtain one to drive, pay taxes, get government benefits, vote,
etc.? (I also wonder what "demographic data" referred to above means, and
whether it means everyone's religion will be encoded on the ID...)

~~~
serf
> I wonder how Americans would feel if the U.S. government teamed up with
> Mastercard, devised a similar biometric ID card -- and required all U.S.
> citizens to obtain one to drive, pay taxes, get government benefits, vote,
> etc.? (I also wonder what "demographic data" referred to above means, and
> whether it means everyone's religion will be encoded on the ID...)

hopefully nauseous. a national ID is bad enough; a national ID ran by a
private conglomerate is worse. The privacy implications are harrowing either
way, from a personal standpoint.

------
praseodym
Back in the nineties, when Java was still the next big thing, manufacturers
promised that we would carry a single Java smartcard for all applications:
identification, credit cards, electronic wallets, etc.

As we now know this never happened. The biggest reason is marketing: every
company wants to have their own logo on the card, which is impossible to do
with a generic card.

Reference from 1998:
ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/software/pervasive/info/javacard.pdf

~~~
Omni5cience
On a related note, I recently found out that all SIM cards run JavaCard
applications. Apparently SIM applications are not uncommon in countries where
smartphones still aren't common.

Check out
[https://simhacks.github.io/defcon-21/](https://simhacks.github.io/defcon-21/)

~~~
praseodym
Indeed, SIM cards in third-world countries seem to be the only place where
installing applets on a third-party smartcard (i.e. the telco's SIM card) is
commonplace.

Smartphones are only recently catching up through the addition of secure
elements in the device. Without them, the SIM card is the only place to
securely store secrets.

------
DannyBee
A bunch of college campuses (including where my ex went, pace university
school of law) had College ID cards that were also mastercards.

They also forced you to activate them (she asked repeatedly if she could avoid
them), so you could not just disable the credit card functionality.

What mastercard has done here seems the logical next step.

At pace, this was called the "pace onecard".

------
einrealist
Sounds like a data protection nightmare. Is there any information about the
chip design and whether both purposes are strictly separated? Who is
maintaining the ID information, MasterCard? Is a POS allowed to read ID data?

~~~
seanflyon
What kind of ID data are you referring to? If when I swiped my credit card the
point of sale could see my name, year of birth, and picture I would consider
that a good thing.

With my drivers license for example anyone I hand the card to can read name,
date of birth address, picture, because those things are printed on the
outside of the card.

~~~
einrealist
To the Personal ID data.

That card contains biometric data and certainly more information that is not
necessary for a transaction. If that card gets cloned, you will lose more than
just money. So the probability of identity theft is much higher - each POS can
be an attacker.

Also, if MasterCard is maintaining both data sets and is losing it, will they
be held liable for the Personal ID data too?

~~~
vidarh
While that is problematic: This is Nigeria. Given that Nigerians themselves
tend to vote Nigeria as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, I
suspect many Nigerians may prefer Mastercard to be the one holding the data
over the Nigerian government...

------
fredbrown
More info:

"The new cards carry two photographs of the holder, and a chip storing an
individual's biometric information including 10 fingerprints and an iris scan
using a system developed by Cryptovision." [0]

[0] [http://www.zdnet.com/nigeria-launches-new-biometric-id-
card-...](http://www.zdnet.com/nigeria-launches-new-biometric-id-card-brought-
to-you-by-mastercard-7000033133/)

~~~
dang
Thanks. We changed the url to that from [http://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-
releases/mastercard-bra...](http://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-
releases/mastercard-branded-national-eid-card-launched-nigeria/).

~~~
fredbrown
No worries. ZDNet offers more info.

------
hammock
Another commenter notes "a bunch of college campuses have College ID cards
that were also mastercards." I would just add to this that Chicago launched
public transit cards this year that are also Mastercards.
[http://www.ventrachicago.com](http://www.ventrachicago.com)

------
dunno
Well, I for one can't see any issues with an entire country of poorly educated
people being given a card that with a flip of a switch, introduce them to the
crippling force of 25.5% compound interest.

I wish I had no morals, making money would be so easy.

~~~
natrius
It's not a credit card.

~~~
fredbrown
It will function as a debit card.

~~~
TomGullen
For now.

------
robertmarley
I was born in Nigeria and grew up there until I was 17 and from what I know
about everyday life in Nigeria, the implementation of this system could be
astoundingly complex. In the foreseeable future, I think that only about 20%
of the population will end up using this system because for most of Nigeria,
life is primarily focused around a cash economy.

Nigerian life is rife with many daily issues that foster a large distrust of
institutions and the government. Master Card and their POS machines, cash and
voting machines would have to build that trust. Life in Nigeria also involves
a lot of wary informal trading between many half-educated people (elementary
school) who do not use banks, do not use any services that are provided by the
government/any large institution, and do not use any automated services at
all.

That trust is already lost with Mastercard's association with the Nigerian
government because the relationship between the people and the government is
quite sour. The government, the leadership of the country (and a good chunk of
the people) are daily involved in corruption.

There are many things in Nigeria that you just can't actually do except you
bribe, or know someone on the inside who will protect you from having to spend
money to bribe. Nepotism tends to be the only alternative to bribery. This
sort of thing is widespread, from purchasing a car, to passing an exam (yes,
sometimes) to just using a roadside mechanic, to driving from point A to point
B (you will have to bribe the police to pass a check point, even if you have
no fault). Adopting a checks-and-balances master card system in this kind of a
society will be ridiculous at best. The everyday institutions, and millions of
people (yes millions!) who thrive on these corrupt systems simply do not want
such a system. Neither does the government. The government is the most corrupt
of all organizations in Nigeria.

Because the problems are so entrenched, it would take a long time for a large
portion of the population to start using this. (BTW The voting part of it is a
joke, or maybe a dream).

Master card is probably only seeking to gain with the growing upper middle
class that work in a mostly formal economy and mostly live in Lagos. If this
section of society adopts their system, they can seek to gain with time.
However, they would need to maintain a good wall between themselves and the
federal government if they want to gain trust and make not reduce this thing
to a joke.

------
mr_spothawk
What could go wrong?

Also, could we soon see a blockchain backed implementation of this? i imagine
a wallet w/ pointers to biometricChain and facialImageChain could be strung
together easily enough and deployed to any national network.

------
frederickf
A corporate branded national ID card sounds like something out of a William
Gibson novel.

~~~
guard-of-terra
They're rolling same thing in Russia, but the adoption in 0s currently. Not
with MasterCard mind you.

------
taksintik
Order amongst chaos.

------
ChrisArchitect
aside: interesting to me the subhead is direct guidelines of how/what to tweet
for this story.

