Skypunch at Identity Week 2025
Categorized as: Company News

Identity Week is Europe’s largest annual conference for all things related to digital identity and authentication and Skypunch’s involvement in it is expected to bear fruit in the years ahead. In 2025, Identity Week was held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands featuring a reported 4000+ attendees and hundreds of exhibitors and startups. The state of West Virginia purchased booth space and invited four of its leading technology companies to fill that space with Skypunch Technology being one of the chosen. The remaining booth space was filled by:
West Virginia is the only US state to do this right alongside the world’s leading digital identity providers.

Top Takeaways
Voter Authentication of the Future
It’s less future and more present as the technology has already been developed and is in limited use, but government- and commerce-issued cards that only work when used by the individual to whom they are issued are a reality with more ubiquitous use expected in the future. In this model, the card itself acts as a fingerprint reader so you must hold the card such that it can read your fingerprint. When successful, the card becomes usable for things like making a purchase in the case of credit or debit cards, or verifying one’s identity in the case of a driver’s license, passport of national identity card. Failure to read the fingerprint associated with the card, renders the card useless. Let’s consider this in a real-world use case.
In many parts of the world, when voting in national elections, one visits a physical location; presents some form of government-issued identification; is then permitted to vote. In an online environment, you instead visit a web address, unlock your government-issued ID card (passport, driver’s license, national ID card, etc.) by presenting it with your fingerprint; then hold the card against the NFC-reader on a smartphone with the Skypunch app installed. The phone presents a 6-digit, one-time password (OTP) that you submit to access the ballot and proceed as normal. That is a high-level description and in fact, the 6-digit OTP would serve as the second factor in a two-factor authentication model where the first factor is a short-lived, voter-specific link sent to a voter by email at the moment they are ready to vote.
This is an attractive option as it provides a very low friction voter experience that does not require any advance preparation to be registered as someone who intends to vote online.
Improvements in facial recognition
Facial recognition is not new, but does continue to improve with my own face serving as my boarding pass during this trip. This is welcome news as the second factor of authentication on a voter’s way to a ballot could again be to present a government-issued ID―with a photo of an individual’s face―and then compare that to their actual face. When the two match, they proceed to the ballot. This is even less friction for a voter than the fingerprint reader described above because it does not require downloading an app to a smartphone―or even owning a smartphone. Unfortunately, in the past, facial recognition has come up a bit short of being adequate for high-stakes authentication use cases as it can be vulnerable to a fake ID. But as stated above, facial recognition has improved along with all that accompanies it such as the ability to detect a fake ID so this warrants a second look.
Potential Partnerships
This could prove to be the biggest news for Skypunch to come out of this conference. Stay tuned as it’s all just talk and nothing concrete to announce―yet.
Conclusion
This article is being written in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Right on cue, as I start to write this section, a couple has sat down a few seats away and starts complaining to their friends about how the self-serve check-in process didn’t go so smoothly and human support was slow to arrive―and not particularly helpful when it did. (Sidenote: Whether in Europe or the Caribbean, my own experience with the Dutch has been quite the opposite as I always find them friendly, welcoming and helpful.) Likewise, one vendor demonstrating his company’s product to me during the conference had issues with the facial recognition conflicting with the lighting in the Skypunch booth space and my own ability to check in at the conference registration desk didn’t follow the usual procedure which relies on presenting a QR code. The point is, we’ve all been there, when some variable―environmental, user error, technology or whatever―fails right in the moment when we need it to work the most. As appealing as some of the options for the future are, there will always need to be a fallback, or good human support available. But those are the exceptions and smart people are moving fast to address the challenges that have previously stood in the way of widespread adoption of carrying out our elections online and enjoying all the advantages that come with that.