Kia ora,
September brought a clear signal that trusted credentials are moving from policy into everyday use. On 17 September, Westpac became the first New Zealand bank accredited under the Digital Identity Services Trust Framework to issue digital credentials. Its first use case is proof of a business bank account in the Govt.nz app. Congratulations to the Westpac team. Read more.
We are working on our 2027 strategy that focuses on three initiatives: Your ID, Your Way; an Aotearoa verifiable trust network pilot; and a cross-sector namespace for agentic identity. We’ll keep you updated as this progresses.
Partnership places for Your ID, Your Way are now open to members ahead of the November launch. You will find more details later in this newsletter.
This was informed by Dr Karaitiana Taiuru’s kōrero: sovereignty is not a permission granted by a framework. It is a property the framework must be built to preserve.
In a BusinessDesk article, we made the case that trust infrastructure for AI agents is the part of the AI economy New Zealand can own. Drummond Reed made a similar case on the NZ Tech Podcast. Headline findings from the 2026 Trust Survey are below, with the full report due in October.
Thank you for being part of the work to build a more trusted, secure and interoperable digital future for Aotearoa New Zealand.
Ngā mihi nui,
Andy Higgs
Executive Director,
Digital Identity New Zealand
DINZ Update
Your ID, Your Way: partnership places open
The campaign goes live in November at yourIDyourway.co.nz. It brings issuers, wallets and verifiers together under one public brand so people can learn what trusted credentials are, how they work, where they can use them, and that they are optional.
Launch content is six YourID Adoption Patterns developed through the TCA Working Group: lost phone and SIM replacement, bank account opening, proof of bank account, qualifications and professional credentials, visitor registration, and age verification. Health and insurance patterns follow in a later wave.
Partnership is open to DINZ members at three tiers: Bronze (reach), Silver (referral, with tracked click-throughs) and Gold (growth partner, with adoption reporting and an advisory seat). Year-one fees are discounted to build participation. DINZ and GDDA keep editorial control. Accreditation under the Trust Framework is voluntary, and partnership neither requires it nor confers it. If your organisation wants to be part of the launch, talk to us in October while co-branding is being signed off.
2026 Trust Survey findings
Our 2026 Trust Survey, with fieldwork by Yabble in July across a nationally representative sample and Māori and Pacific Peoples samples, shows nearly half of Kiwis have been targeted by scams. Other findings include:
- 49% of New Zealanders have been targeted by a scam.
- 52% walk away when a business asks for information they think it does not need.
- 77% are comfortable proving a single fact, such as being over 18, without revealing their date of birth.
- 61% are ready or open to a reusable digital identity.
- A trust mark would lift trust for 68% of people, yet only 29% know one exists.
The full report, Towards Universal Trust, with a foreword from our Chair Maria Robertson, will be published in October.
The part of the AI economy New Zealand can own
In BusinessDesk last week, I answered Pattrick Smellie’s question about why no aspiring political leader has an AI ambition bigger than selling electrons to someone else’s data centres. My answer: trust infrastructure.
When an AI agent books your travel or lodges a claim, you cannot check who it works for, what it was permitted to do, or whether it did it. Verifiable trust infrastructure gives each person, business or community its own agent—holding its owner’s keys, data and rules, and checking every action against the owner’s policy.
New Zealand is well placed to lead. The Trust Framework Act already sets rules for how people prove who they are; mana motuhake gives us a working idea of collective data authority; and one of our cities or regions is small enough to run a pilot inside a year. Any such pilot has to be Māori-led in its design from the start. The ask of the next Government is modest: name a minister, back one pilot with council, iwi and industry at the table, and take it to Geneva in 2027.
Industry News
Join the SEDI Summit in Utah
At the Hui Taumata, Christopher Bramwell, Chief Privacy Officer for the State of Utah, invited our community to the SEDI Summit, 17-19 November in Park City. SEDI, or State-Endorsed Digital Identity, is Utah’s model for letting people prove who they are, or a single fact about themselves, without surveillance, central control or dependence on one vendor. It is one of the closest international parallels to the settings we have here, and the summit brings together legislators, officials, technologists and civil liberties advocates.
Drummond Reed on New Zealand
Drummond Reed joined Paul Spain on the NZ Tech Podcast, covering self-sovereign identity, AI agents, proof of personhood and the approaches taken in Bhutan, India, Utah and the EU. He sees a special opportunity for New Zealand and has offered to help us to pilot and scale verifiable trust infrastructure.