From outcomes to shared rails

Use Cases

Use cases are the north star. DPI is the shared rail that makes those outcomes repeatable at scale. We describe use cases with a practical lens: adoption, governance, and trust safeguards.

How DPI shows up in real delivery

The same pattern appears across sectors. Services scale when shared building blocks are reused: identity to verify who is involved, payments to move value safely, and data exchange to share the minimum needed information with accountability.

Digital identity

Verify people and organizations, support credentials, and reduce repeated onboarding across services.

Digital payments

Move money between government, providers, and people with interoperability and clear reconciliation.

Consent based data sharing

Enable data exchange across public and private actors with safeguards, logging, and enforceable rules.

High leverage use cases we prioritize

These use cases are selected because they demand cross agency coordination, benefit from shared rails, and require trust to scale.

Financial onboarding and account opening

Reduce friction and fraud in eKYC, onboarding, and account provisioning by reusing identity and consent based verification.

DPI building blocks: identity, data exchange, trust services
  • Key design questions: what is verified once vs verified every time, and how exceptions are handled.
  • Safeguards: data minimization, auditability, and clear accountability for third party access.
  • Early wins: a single verification pathway that works across channels and providers.

G2P payments and social protection delivery

Deliver benefits end to end, from identifying who should be paid to reconciliation and grievance redress, without leaking funds or excluding eligible people.

DPI building blocks: identity, payments, data exchange, registries and MIS
  • Key design questions: account mapping, provider interoperability, and failure handling at scale.
  • Safeguards: grievance handling, reconciliation transparency, and protection against wrongful exclusion.
  • Early wins: reduce manual steps in targeting, enrollment, and payment execution while improving traceability.

Interoperable merchant payments

Enable households and micro businesses to pay and get paid across providers and channels, reducing fragmentation and boosting adoption.

DPI building blocks: payments, identity, trust services
  • Key design questions: how wallets, banks, and PSPs connect, and how disputes are resolved.
  • Safeguards: consumer protection, fraud monitoring, and transparent rules for participants.
  • Early wins: consistent merchant acceptance experience and simpler onboarding.

Regulated data exchange for verification and risk

Support eligibility checks and risk assessments by enabling trusted data sharing across agencies and regulated private actors.

DPI building blocks: consent based data sharing, identity, governance foundations
  • Key design questions: purpose limitation, permitted uses, and enforcement.
  • Safeguards: clear rights, obligations, accountability mechanisms, and oversight capacity.
  • Early wins: reduce repeated document requests and speed up approvals without expanding surveillance.

Digital credentials for eligibility

Prove status or eligibility without repeated paperwork by using credentials that can be verified across providers.

DPI building blocks: identity, trust services, interoperability standards
  • Key design questions: who issues, who verifies, and how revocation or updates work.
  • Safeguards: user control, minimal disclosure, and reliable verification logs.
  • Early wins: faster service access with fewer repeated checks.

Service access across channels

Make services usable via assisted channels, mobile, and offline compatible workflows, while keeping identity and payments consistent.

DPI building blocks: identity, payments, channel integration
  • Key design questions: how to support agent models, device constraints, and accessibility needs.
  • Safeguards: fraud controls in assisted channels and strong redress pathways.
  • Early wins: fewer dead ends for users who cannot complete digital only flows.

What INA/LAB publishes for each use case

Decision questions

The few choices that determine whether scale is possible and safe.

Minimum safeguards

A baseline trust checklist that can be strengthened over time.

Operating model notes

Roles, escalation, logging, dispute handling, and public oversight patterns.

Have a priority use case?
Send one sentence on the outcome you are trying to achieve and the hardest delivery constraint you face.
Published by INA/LAB as part of our work on Digital Public Infrastructure.