Is there a startup opportunity for an identity verification service whereby you do the ID verification once and then each service that wants to use it gets charged a smaller amount?
Example: consumer goes to idverificationsite.com, registers there for free- they ask out of wallet questions to verify identity, potentially do a minimal background check too.
You then use this login with Yelp, AirBnB, Getaround, etc.
Yelp, Getaround, Airbnb pay idverificationsite.com some small amount per verified person. Removes some of the friction of ID verification/spreads cost around.
There was an interesting article in Inc. magazine a while back about a company that tried that. They found out that no sites wanted to use the service, even though they saw how it might solve their problems, because it would immediately make their non-verified users less valuable.
Google actually used to do verification on people with Knol; you'd type in a credit card number and it would look up your name on the CC and match it against the name in your profile. I think that functionality got retired.
It would be nice if this service was available more globally.
There are at least two startup opportunities for something like this. One is the creation of the credential/verified identity certification and the second is the transmission/exchange of the credential. These are two very disparate set of competencies.
Several years ago, I was working with Honesty Online, doing exactly this identity verification startup prop and where it became very evident that this is really two businesses. Now we, in another startup, sigkat.com, are very early stage in the second business - creation/exchange/transmission of any sort of credentials so that vertical apps like identity verification can focus on their domain.
Example: consumer goes to idverificationsite.com, registers there for free- they ask out of wallet questions to verify identity, potentially do a minimal background check too.
You then use this login with Yelp, AirBnB, Getaround, etc.
Yelp, Getaround, Airbnb pay idverificationsite.com some small amount per verified person. Removes some of the friction of ID verification/spreads cost around.
Sidenote: the BBB is the worst offender of these protection rackets - http://feefighters.com/blog/bbb-accreditation/
Also - I've just decided to start posting reviews to Google rather than Yelp, they lost me as a product after reading this thread.