Mobile networks have spent decades building infrastructure for communication. In the process, they have also become authoritative about a narrow set of facts other organisations independently need to check: who controls a phone number, whether a SIM has recently changed, whether a number is active, whether a device is the one normally associated with a customer, and whether customer information matches what the operator holds.
Today, everyone checks separately
Banks, insurers, merchants and government services each build their own process around information that may already be authoritative somewhere else — sometimes sharing portions of it, increasing both exposure and risk in the process.
GSMA Open Gateway
The GSMA Open Gateway initiative is making mobile network capabilities available to other organisations in a standardised way, through APIs including Number Verification, SIM Swap, KYC Match, device information and location verification. These are usually described as APIs, but they function as a mechanism for moving trusted outcomes between organisations: the MNO does not disclose everything it knows, only answers a specific question within the area where it is authoritative. In South Africa, operators have already introduced standard Number Verification and SIM Swap APIs that let banks verify customer information directly with mobile networks, rather than each institution solving the problem independently.
MNOs as Trust Authorities
A bank does not necessarily need a copy of an MNO's customer database or government records — it may simply need to know whether the person requesting a transaction controls the number associated with the account. An insurer may need a trusted answer to a specific question rather than access to the underlying network information. That narrow, well-defined authority is what could make MNOs important Trust Authorities in the digital economy: not because they know everything, but because they are authoritative about specific things they already know.