Digitalizing the mobile economy in Latin America

The largest online market is Brazil, accounting for 42% of all online retail sales, followed by Mexico and Argentina, which will be the fastest-growing e-commerce market of the three countries (BI Intelligence). Rafael Canon, Telecom Marketing Manager for LATAM at Safran Identity & Security, sees his mission as working to help Latin American mobile network operators to define their role in this evolution and to accelerate the digitalization of the economy.
“Digital life calls for digital identities. Security and convenience in handling these is the basis for digital growth – here mobile network operators have the opportunity to build acceptance and growth of digital transactions by offering new ways for secure and convenient authentication.”

For all of us, the need to be identified, and sometimes also to be authenticated, starts as soon as we try and connect to a service. Each and every day, we all have to enter usernames and passwords multiple times, and when the service is sensitive, potentially multiple passwords. “To solve this problem, we recommend our GSMA Mobile Connect solution. Instead of remembering an ever-increasing number of usernames and passwords, with Mobile Connect operators can provide a single trusted, secure and convenient SIM-based authentication solution,” explains Canon.
Latin American mobile network operators (MNOs) have just started to adopt Mobile Connect, and Rafael tells us “The next step will be to enhance Mobile Connect with biometric technology.” Just like banks: the Latin American “Banco Itaú” reports that, thanks to biometrics, digital transaction time has been reduced by more than 30%, and, above all, fraud decreased by 68%.

One way MNOs can do the same thing is to integrate biometric facial recognition into the Mobile Connect solution: A simple “selfie check” with the smartphone enables users to verify their identities quickly and, of course, securely. Liveness detection ensures that the selfie-check is actually made by a live user, and not using a photograph.” Canon is convinced: “This is a unique way to combine security and convenience – and in my opinion it will bring the next big boost for the digitalization of the economy in Latin America.”