We're thrilled to share that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted Nametag U.S. Patent No. 12739248, "Systems and methods for identity verification via third-party digital identity service." The patent relates to technologies for proving that the person presenting a digital identity credential is the same person it was issued to. It's our sixth granted U.S. patent, and the first in a new patent family built around digital identity credentials.
Check out the press release, then keep reading for what it means for your organization.
Why this matters now
Digital IDs are moving from pilot programs into everyday infrastructure.
- In the U.S., the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) now accepts mobile driver's licenses and state-issued digital IDs from 15 states and Puerto Rico at more than 250 airport checkpoints.
- In Europe, E.U. Regulation 2024/1183 requires every E.U. member state to make a European Digital Identity Wallet available to its citizens and residents by December 2026.
- In Asia, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which operates the largest digital identity system in the world, reports more than 1.44 billion Aadhaar numbers generated.
For CISOs, IAM Directors, and security and identity practitioners more broadly, the writing is on the wall: sooner or later, someone at your organization will ask if you can accept a government-issued digital ID in place of a physical identity document. It’s important you understand what a digital ID does and doesn’t prove about a person.
What a digital ID does and doesn't prove
A digital ID carries the issuing authority's cryptographic signature. Any verifier can check it to confirm that the credential itself is valid and that nobody has altered it. What the signature can't tell you is who is actually presenting that credential. It also can’t tell you whether the authority did their due diligence before issuing the credential.
In other words: a digital ID tells you who the credential describes. It can't tell you whether the person presenting it is that person. Any organization considering accepting digital IDs needs a way to close that gap.
"A digital ID is a cryptographically signed artifact, but an artifact alone cannot tell you that the person offering it up for examination is the same person it describes. Closing that gap requires binding an authentic credential to a live person at the moment of presentation, with the same cryptographic rigor the issuing authority used to sign it. Anything less leaves one side of the transaction unproven." — Samantha CHan, Head of Product Management at Nametag
A simple PIN or passcode entry can’t suffice; all these can tell you is that someone knows a piece of information. In high-risk situations like employee onboarding or account recoveries, security and risk teams need a greater level of assurance.
How Nametag closes the digital ID assurance gap
Nametag’s patented method closes the digital ID assurance gap by verifying that the person presenting a digital ID truly matches the credential at the point of presentation, before any action is authorized.
For end-users, the flow is simple: Nametag compares their live selfie against identity data retrieved from the credential’s issuing authority, and a pass or fail decision is returned. Both sides of the check are verified: the credential’s authenticity is confirmed using information from the issuing authority; the selfie is verified to confirm it was captured live and has not been altered. The result is proof of identity that organizations can act on at the moments that carry the most risk, including onboarding a new hire, restoring access to an account, and authorizing a high-privilege action.
Currently, this capability is available within our workforce identity assurance platform as Adaptive e-ID Verification™, exemplified by our integration with India’s Aadhaar.
"Digital IDs are transformative for users and verifiers alike. But the underlying systems assume that if you can present a credential, it belongs to you. And that creates an assurance gap. The confidence you can place in any identity credential is only as high as the confidence you have that the correct person is holding it. That's the problem we've been working on for years, and this patent covers one of our answers." – Aaron Painter, CEO at Nametag
Verify the person behind the credential with Nametag
This patent joins other patented technologies which power our Deepfake Defense™ identity assurance engine, including binding a person to their directory accounts, re-associating a previously-verified user to their new device, and maintaining a chain of verified selfies to enable express re-verification without storing biometric templates.
Read the press release, then contact us for a demo to see how Nametag prevents breaches and reduces operational costs with out-of-the-box solutions for verifying the person in high-risk moments like onboarding, helpdesk tickets, and account recovery.
