In today’s increasingly digital world, verifying who someone is has never been more important—or more complicated. From accessing your bank account to signing legal documents, digital identity has become the cornerstone of how we interact online. But what exactly is digital identity, and why should you care? This overview will break down common questions people have about digital identity, explore its many forms, and show you how Vaultie, a company focused on building accessible Canadian digital trust in verifiable digital credentials—is making trust easier, faster, and more secure.

At its core, digital identity is a collection of electronic credentials and identifiers that prove who you are online. These can include: your email and password, biometric data (like a face scan or fingerprint), government-issued ID photos and verified attributes (your address, age, or professional designation).  Digital identity is the electronic equivalent of presenting a driver's license, passport, or membership card to verify yourself in the real world.


Can you explain the use of digital identity and what can go wrong? 


Think of logging into your online banking account using two-factor authentication. Your password confirms your credentials, and your smartphone or fingerprint confirms it’s really you. Verification confirms that the person holding the digital identity is who they say they are. 


What can go wrong with this?  As fraudsters become more sophisticated, we are seeing a rise of scams, identity theft and fraud. Digital identity theft involves impersonating someone online to gain access to their sensitive information.  Vaultie verifies over 14,000 types of identity documents from 251 countries and territories. It uses a combination of optical character recognition (OCR), liveness detection, facial biometric matching, and it's all done in less than two minutes.  Vaultie offers secure, interoperable, and verifiable credentials that can travel across platforms and borders. As a user, you can store your credentials in your own private, secure Vaultie Vault, and not on an unknown centralized server.

Digital identity solutions help businesses and governments verify and manage user identities online. It's a public infrastructure and private enterprise imperative to protecting customers and citizens.  Vaultie offers an integrated suite of tools that includes, KYC (Know Your Client) for lawyers, lenders, and financial advisors and digital signature workflows. 


A digital identity wallet stores your verified credentials and allows you to control who sees them. With Vaultie, this is called the Vault, where you can hold your credentials, and then decide when and with whom you'd like to share those credentials. Each share includes a cryptographically verifiable trail.


What are some real world examples of using Vaultie? 


We are proud to represent many amazing private sector businesses and public sector organizations. Some examples includes law firms using Vaultie to verify a client’s ID remotely and collect a biometric signature, with no office visit required, or mortgage lenders uses Vaultie to attach a verified ID check to a credit application. There are no special login or accounts required for the recipient. Just scan and verify.

Digital identity is not just a trend—it's the infrastructure of the future. As governments move toward open banking, digital service delivery, and cross-border compliance, the need for secure, verifiable credentials will grow. Vaultie is already there supporting legal, financial, and government sectors, providing secure credential wallets to thousands of Canadians and helping people and institutions to build trust more easily.

What Is Digital Identity?

Digital trust is foundational to how companies protect their reputations, grow revenue, and build relationships that last.

It’s not just a security checkbox or a compliance obligation, it’s the new backbone of business operations. Whether you're a global financial institution, a fast-scaling startup, or a law firm navigating sensitive cases, your ability to prove who you are and what you stand behind is now inseparable from your ability to grow and thrive.

We like to imagine that business is built on trust.

A huge portion of the global economy runs on relationships where trust isn’t present and maybe never was.

> Lawyers don’t “trust” opposing counsel. They verify IDs, track every signature, keep receipts.

> Banks don’t “trust” borrowers. They verify income, assets, and creditworthiness.
> Landlords don’t “trust” tenants. They check IDs, deposits, and references.

Lots of business takes place between parties that know they can’t trust each other—and they proceed anyway, because systems exist to try to protect them.

While we honour our community and value what it means to do what you say you’re going to do, we know we have to build something even more reliable.

That’s why the future of trust isn’t emotional, but instead, it’s infrastructure.

At Vaultie, we’re not trying to make people trust each other more. That’s a high bar, built on relationships and history and gut instinct. Instead, we’re focused on something more reliable. We’re building the tools that make trust unnecessary because the proof is built in.

Vaultie’s technology asserts that a specific issuer made a statement—and that the statement has not been altered. Whether the statement is true or not is left to the verifier to decide. We don’t play referee. We provide clarity.

...and now that we think of it, maybe that’s the simplest way to say it:

When authentication is strong, transparent, and portable, trust doesn’t have to be assumed. It can be earned, verified, and scaled. That’s what allows organizations to take bigger risks, move faster, and build smarter. It’s what turns compliance into clarity. It’s what moves partnerships from handshake to reality.

In today’s world, trust isn't claimed—it's proven. The strongest organizations don’t ask for blind belief. They give others the tools to say: We don’t just trust this, we authenticated it.

Building Relationships that Last Through Digital Trust

Starting October 11th, 2024, mortgage industry agents must follow new FINTRAC rules to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. Read below to learn about these requirements and how Vaultie can help you easily meet your KYC (Know Your Client) obligations.

When you first start a business relationship with a client, you must verify their identity. Keep reading to see how Vaultie makes this process simple! You also need to check if a third party is involved in large transactions or if the client is a politically exposed person. 

Verifying your client's identity has never been easier. Simply input your client's email, and a request will be sent to them directly. The process takes 5 minutes, and involves taking a photo of their government-issued photo ID, then taking a selfie. Our secure approach to ID verification ensures that you and your client's information will remain private, no matter where they verify from.

How Vaultie Helps Mortgage Agents with KYC Protocols Under New FINTRAC Requirements

Three different paths all led to similar answers. Learn about the origins of identity verification within the legal sector in Canada through our podcast with DIACC President Joni Brennan, Jay Krushell and Phil Brown. 

DIACC’s Joni Brennan, the Law Society of Ontario’s Phil Brown, Vaultie’s Meyer Mechanic and Treefort’s Jay Krushell all joined together to discuss the origins of Identity verification in Law

T2D2: Diving into Law Societies, Lawyers, and Client ID Verification with Phil, Jay, and Meyer

We delve into the challenges, opportunities, and principles guiding the future of digital identity verification in the legal sector.

Trust Talks and Digital Dives: Diving into Law Societies, Lawyers, and Client ID Verification

Detective David Coffey reported that the Financial Crimes Unit initiated an investigation in 2022 into a synthetic identity credit fraud scheme that originated in 2016. The investigation revealed that several suspects had purportedly generated over 680 distinct fake identities. These identities were then employed to submit applications and establish hundreds of bank and credit accounts at numerous banks and financial institutions throughout Ontario.

Can you spot what's wrong with one of the IDs?

We had a hard time telling by looking at these with our naked eyes, but some telltale signs might tip you off. These would be have been caught by our tests, which include facial biometrics, a live selfie compared to a government-issued ID in real time, and an auditable authenticity report for KYC compliance. When you verify your clients with Vaultie, we run 15 different tests on their ID to ensure it is authentic, giving you peace of mind that your clients are who they say they are. 

Find out more about how we’re preventing fraud daily for over 700 law firms.

The Toronto Police Service recently busted a counterfeit ring through Project Déja Vu. The operation led to 12 arrests, 102 charges and at least $4 million in lost funds

Hey, Meyer Mechanic here, founder of Vaultie. I founded the company on the belief that there should be a safer approach to interacting with your clients, think, a “clean hands” approach. I think digital identity and credentialing solve that issue. Coming from a banking background, I set out to create a software that would enable individuals to digitally lay claim to their personal data and allow anyone they chose to share it with to verify it.

Fraudsters are becoming smarter, and the tools we relied on for decades no longer offer those same protections, especially when it comes to digital trust.

We do this by tethering fraud-resilient and verifiable credentials to sensitive information such as digital IDs, legal documents, and financial contracts, and also by anchoring data to blockchain. So, we created a digital trust solution that can always be authenticated by others.

We’re happy to have you, welcome. 

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How we're changing the digital trust game

We help individuals secure their personal data using blockchain technology to create verifiable credentials tied to digital IDs, legal documents, and financial contracts. This provides a fraud-resistant digital trail that collaborators can always authenticate and trace.

Our core values are rooted in offering ultra-secure digital trust solutions.

We’ve made it our mission to make Vaultie the ultimate solution for all of your digital trust needs

Insights & Revelations!