By Shaun Strydom, CEO of Contactable
For years, the digital identity debate assumed banks would drive adoption. They have regulatory depth, compliance maturity and long-standing customer trust.
The evidence now points elsewhere.
In fact, the organisations best positioned to accelerate digital identity adoption may be the same ones that already transformed payments and financial services across Africa: telcos.
The fintech signal executives can’t ignore
Vodacom’s latest results tell a story that challenges old assumptions. Over the past year, its mobile money platforms processed more than R8 trillion in transaction value. Including Safaricom, the group now serves over 100 million financial services customers. MTN’s MoMo ecosystem shows a similar pattern across multiple markets.
These are not side businesses. They are platform ecosystems.
Telcos recognised a structural gap early: mobile penetration far outpaced access to formal banking. Rather than waiting for perfect policy alignment, they used existing assets—distribution, billing relationships, retail presence and regulatory engagement—to build financial infrastructure at population scale. Once payments worked, everything around them accelerated.
Digital identity in South Africa is approaching a similar moment.
Infrastructure is converging — but adoption isn’t automatic
South Africa’s digital foundations are aligning quickly. Payment rails are being modernised, biometric digital identity is moving online, and national roadmaps are connecting identity, payments and data exchange into interoperable public infrastructure.
This matters. But infrastructure alone does not drive adoption.
Adoption happens when organisations with reach, incentives and ecosystems turn capability into everyday utility. Telcos already operate at that intersection. They manage identity processes at scale through RICA, maintain persistent customer relationships, and run multi-sided ecosystems spanning consumers, merchants, agents, fintechs, banks and regulators.
The missing piece is not identity issuance. It’s reusable trust.
Why identity only scales inside trust frameworks
Digital identity becomes infrastructure only when trust is portable — when one institution’s verification can be relied on by another without starting again.
Telcos already understand this dynamic. Payments scaled once trust could move safely between wallets, merchants, banks and regulators. Identity follows the same logic. A reusable, verifiable credential — anchored in biometrics, cryptography and regulatory alignment — becomes more valuable each time it is accepted elsewhere.
Onboarding accelerates. Fraud drops. Marginal costs fall. Identity stops being friction and starts becoming a platform capability.
Why telcos will move faster than expected
When trusted capabilities work at scale, ecosystems organise around them. Telcos have three advantages that make rapid adoption likely:
- Scale: tens of millions of active customer relationships.
- Commercial incentive: lower onboarding friction and fraud reduction flow directly to margins.
- Regulatory proximity: deep experience operating inside governed environments while shaping how rules evolve.
The question is no longer whether telcos will influence digital identity adoption, but whether they recognise the opportunity early enough to lead it.
From RICA obligation to identity infrastructure
Today, RICA is treated largely as a compliance burden. But it already contains the seed of something much bigger.
A modernised, digital RICA credential—verified once, biometrically anchored, cryptographically secured and reusable across networks and services—turns identity from a cost centre into a trust primitive.
The implications are concrete: instant digital onboarding, cross-product activation using a single verified identity, structural fraud reduction, and alignment with the future direction of national identity and payments infrastructure.
In this model, RICA is not the endpoint. It’s the on-ramp.
Identity that enables ecosystems, not inhibits them
The strategic risk for telcos is fragmentation: duplicated verification, brittle integrations and point solutions that slow ecosystems just as they should be accelerating. A telco running separate vendors for biometrics, document verification, AML screening and workflow across multiple business units isn’t building an ecosystem — it’s managing a patchwork.
Identity must enable what telcos are building, not inhibit it.
This requires an integrated identity layer that absorbs regulatory change, credential standards and evolving trust frameworks, and presents identity as a consistent, reusable capability across the customer journey. Identity becomes infrastructure—embedded, composable and ready to scale with the ecosystem.
The catalyst question
Later this month, I’ll be at the did:unconference exploring a simple question: Is RICA4U the catalyst for digital identity adoption?
The identity community has long searched for what would take verifiable credentials from theory to population scale. The answer may not lie in mandates or standards alone, but in the commercial incentives of organisations that already connect the country.
Telcos didn’t build fintech because they were told to. They built it because the opportunity was too large to ignore. Digital identity now presents the same opportunity.
The infrastructure is converging. The trust frameworks are emerging. The commercial logic is clear.
The remaining variable is who will move first.
If you’re working in telecoms, financial services or the broader identity ecosystem, I’d welcome the conversation. Get your tickets to the did:unconference here.
