Yoti has provided more details on the Explore feature in its digital identity app. In doing so, the company acknowledged that while setting up a Yoti account is relatively straightforward, many people may not yet know what they can do with their new digital ID.
Explore is designed to solve that problem. The feature shows Yoti users a list of establishments that accept Yoti IDs, and businesses that offer special deals to those that do. The recommendations are both region and age appropriate, which is to say that Explore will not show age-restricted services to minors, and that the app will only show people services that are available in their own country. Yoti’s age assessment is based on the ID that a user uploads to the app, though Yoti itself will not have access to that personal information.
The region assessment, on the other hand, is linked to the user’s mobile phone number country code, and does not rely on location data. That means that Yoti does not know where users are at any given time, though the company acknowledged that that does have some drawbacks in terms of utility. For example, a user who travels to another country will still see the same Yoti recommendations that they saw at home based on their mobile number.
In the interest of transparency, Yoti noted that it does charge a marketing fee to businesses that advertise through the Yoti app. The company does not necessarily guarantee the best price for those products, though it does vet its partners to ensure that they are legitimate businesses before listing them through Yoti Explore. Yoti also generates revenue by charging a fee to businesses that use its identity verification services.
However, the company does not engage in any kind of targeted marketing. In that regard, Yoti stressed that it does not track anyone’s app or browser history, and therefore cannot show someone ads that correspond to their personal interests. Having said that, Yoti is planning to update Explore to give users the ability to filter their own recommendations to better reflect their own preferences.
The Explore utility is available through the Yoti app and through the Post Office EasyID app that was introduced earlier this year. The Yoti app has been downloaded more than 10 million times as of April of 2021.
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