The OpenID Foundation is proud to have participated in the 2025 G20 TechSprint - an annual global initiative that brings together innovators to address critical challenges facing central banks and regulators worldwide.

This year’s event was a collaboration between the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, under the G20 Presidency. It focused on trust and integrity in scalable and open finance, attracting over 165 teams from more than 30 countries. 15 finalists were selected to present their solutions across three critical problem statements: 

• Digital identity solutions to establish trust among financial institutions through verifiable and privacy-preserving technologies.
• Credit data portability to improve small and medium-sized enterprises’ access to finance through secure, consumer-consented data exchange mechanisms.
• Fraud and cyber-risk mitigation in fast payment systems to promote the secure and inclusive adoption of instant payment systems.

The OpenID Foundation’s Executive Director, Gail Hodges, was invited to serve on the independent expert panel assessing the entries for the first problem statement, alongside fellow judges Joseph Atick, Executive Chairmen for ID4Africa, and Shri P. Vasudevan, Executive Director for Reserve Bank of India.

This problem statement addressed one of the most pressing challenges in both domestic and cross-border payments: how to create digital identity solutions that are both verifiable and privacy preserving. Innovators were tasked with developing solutions that could establish trust across borders, preserve user privacy, and scale effectively across different jurisdictions.

Congratulations to the winner of this category, Ownapay SA (Proprietary) Limited from South Africa, and also go to the winners of the two other problem statements on credit data portability, and fraud and cyber security risk mitigation: Silence Laboratories Pte. Ltd. from Singapore, and FNA and Proto from the UK. 

Each category winner received awards of up to USD 30,000.

Watch the full awards ceremony: G20 TechSprint 2025 Awards, 11 November — Trust and integrity in scalable and open finance. - YouTube

Keynote address on digital identity standards

It was the first time digital identity played a key role in this annual global initiative, and to mark the occasion, Gail was invited to deliver a keynote presentation on digital identity standards. 

Her presentation highlighted the immense scale of global cybercrime, with estimates ranging from $1-10 trillion, and emphasised the urgent need for high assurance digital identity credentials to counter this escalating threat.

Gail discussed the rapid evolution of digital identity deployments and the emerging trend towards decentralised, wallet based and verifiable credential models. She noted that privacy concerns are driving the adoption of decentralised models in many early adopting countries in the global north, whilst each market may focus on different benefits and champion use cases. She also stressed the importance of driving adoption and the role events, such as the TechSprint, can play in stimulating development and innovation.

"It was a true honour to be invited to judge the first ever G20 TechSprint on digital identity. Given that global cybercrime is estimated to be $1-10 trillion and AI-enabled attacks risk current identity and verification infrastructure globally, I hope the US government will embrace digital identity in their G20 Presidency in line with their focus on economic prosperity and technical innovation," said Gail.

About the OpenID Foundation

The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) is a global open standards body committed to helping people assert their identity wherever they choose. Founded in 2007, we are a community of technical experts leading the creation of open identity standards that are secure, interoperable, and privacy preserving. The Foundation’s OpenID Connect standard is now used by billions of people across millions of applications. In the last five years, the Financial Grade API has become the standard of choice for Open Banking and Open Data implementations, allowing people to access and share data across entities. Today, the OpenID Foundation’s standards are the connective tissue to enable people to assert their identity and access their data at scale, the scale of the internet, enabling “networks of networks” to interoperate globally. Individuals, companies, governments and non-profits are encouraged to join or participate. Find out more at openid.net.