The Canadian Bankers Association has come out in support of the idea for blockchain technology to be part of a Canada’s national ID system for its residents, according to The Canadian Press.  

On Jan. 15, chief executive of the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA) Neil Parmenter expressed support during his presentation at the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto. Parmented emphasized that tamper-proof solutions as the backbone to ID procedures was essential for the finance and banking sectors.

“Instantly verifying who someone is using multiple digital reference points is more secure than relying on a photocopy of a driver’s licence,” he explained, adding that,  “Because this digital network is connected, yet decentralized, the risk of compromising the system is reduced by eliminating ‘honeypots’ of data that hackers tend to target”.

CBA had originally made sketch plans for a digital ID in a white paper in May last year. Though the paper did not make specific references to blockchain, it did, however, praise ID systems being rolled out in Estonia and India as examples for Canada.

Parmenter’s comments also come as Canada pays more attention to opportunities in “open banking”, where third-party companies such as fintech start-ups are allowed to access user data traditionally reserved for banking. The Canadian government just placed this concept into public consultation last week.

Canada is currently exploring blockchain solutions in other areas as well. Last year, it was announced that the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) had agreed to pilot a blockchain-enabled digital shipping solution developed by Maersk and IBM.