News Release

City, University of London's Professor Muttukrishnan Rajarajan is the academic lead on the Space-Wallet digital ID project

The cybersecurity specialist is working alongside EarthID to develop a cloud-based, decentralised-ID wallet that enables the management of digital ID/credentials.

Business Announcement

City University London

Professor Muttukrishnan Rajarajan

image: Professor Muttukrishnan Rajarajan view more 

Credit: John Stevenson, City, University of London

Director of City’s Institute for Cyber SecurityProfessor Muttukrishnan Rajarajan, is working alongside Earth ID to develop Space-Wallet, a cloud-based, decentralised-ID wallet that enables the management of digital ID/credentials.

Space-Wallet is a first-in-class cost-efficient, device-agnostic, fraud-proof, portable, reusable, user-centric, World Wide Web Consortium-compliant, cloud-based, decentralised-ID wallet, that enables management of digital ID/credentials. Space-Wallet allows organisations to issue, request and verify its users’ credentials in a fraud-proof and cost-efficient manner, whilst offering users data-ownership and privacy. Space-Wallet will be integrated with EarthID’s multi award-winning platform, benefiting from its industry-leading capabilities.

In 2020, the global cost of identity-fraud was £38.38B (Javelin-Strategy-Research,2021). In 2021, there were 226K cases of identity-fraud reported, an increase of 22%, which accounted for 63% of all fraud cases (National-Fraud-Database 2022).

To prevent identity-thefts/frauds, financial institutions spend approximately £42.8M on customer-due-diligence processes. Major financial institutions spend up to £446.25M protecting customer-data (Thomson-Reuters 2022). A cost-effective, fraud-proof solution is therefore required to reduce identity thefts and associated financial, reputational, and emotional impact.

Space-Wallet, developed with assistance from Innovate UK, is expected to assist organisations to save up to 80% in expenses and 90% of their time through the prevention of identity fraud, the elimination of human-intervention, re-use of verified-data and paperless-processing. It will also remove the digital divide by offering a device-agnostic solution. Space-Wallet will eliminate paper-based identity management processes, thereby reducing industry’s carbon-footprint significantly.

From equality-diversity-inclusion standpoint, existing solutions rely on high-end smartphones, creating accessibility-barrier for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds

Earth ID Co-founder and CEO, Priya Guliani, said:

"We are thrilled to have been awarded this prestigious grant from Innovate UK and it’s a massive validation of our vision to drive social, financial and digital inclusion by providing a secure and user-centric digital identity solution for everyone. Our partnership with City, University of London will enable us to develop a cutting-edge solution that will prevent fraud and provide a seamless user experience. We are excited about the potential of self-sovereign identity to transform financial industry, and we are grateful for the support of Innovate UK in helping us make this vision a reality."

Professor Muttukrishnan Rajarajan, said:

“As we move from the physical to the metaverse it will become increasingly more important to manage our identity credentials, payments and digital assets. Hence the necessity to own a digital wallet that is secure, preserves privacy and is interoperable. This very exciting EarthID project will develop the next generation of digital wallets which are device-agnostic, cloud-based and user-centric and will empower citizens to manage their identities, digital assets and digital money”.


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