One identity. Many surfaces.
A credential is not a printed card with a chip in it. It is a governed identity record that can surface as a badge, a wristband, a table topper, a ring, a tag sewn into a uniform — or all of them at once, for the same person, revoked in one action.
One record. Four layers. As many interfaces as you need.
Every IDConnect credential maps to one canonical record. That record knows who the credential belongs to, what it shows, which radios it speaks, where it points, when it was issued, and whether it is still valid. Add a second form factor and you have not created a second identity — you have added an interface to the one that already exists.
Who or what the credential represents.
Which radios and scan technologies it exposes.
What it communicates to a human looking at it.
How it is issued, replaced, and revoked.
This is why we do not sell form factors as separate products. The card, the band and the fob are one credential wearing different clothes.
What the credential can physically be.
Pick by the situation, not by the catalogue. The question is always the same: where will this person or object be when someone needs to identify it, and what will their hands be doing?
Printed NFC card
A branded PVC card with an NFC chip inside. Tap it to a phone and the vID opens — no app on either side. This is the reference form factor because it is the only one that carries the full visual layer: name, title, organization, and your brand.
Dual-frequency badge
Two chips in one card: a 13.56 MHz NFC chip that phones can read, and a 125 kHz low-frequency chip that legacy door readers and time clocks can read. Staff carry one credential instead of two, and it stays one governed record on our side.
Table topper
A standing NFC marker for a table, counter, bar, or booth. Guests tap or scan to reach a menu, an order page, a review link, or the business vID. Each unit is individually identified, so you can tell table four from table nine in the analytics.
Wristbands and silicone bands
Where a card in a pocket is impractical. Kitchens, plants, pools, wards, festivals, shift work. Silicone survives washing and knocks, and the band cannot be set down on a counter and forgotten.
Rings and wearables
A ring, a bracelet, a watch strap insert. The fastest possible tap because it is already where your hand is. Treat it as a second interface to the same credential, not a replacement — a ring cannot show anyone your name.
Key fobs
Rides on the keyring that already leaves the house every morning. The pragmatic pick for contractors, drivers, and anyone whose badge lives in a truck rather than on a lanyard.
Sewn into clothing
A washable NFC tag sewn into a seam, cuff, or apron pocket. Nothing to issue at the start of a shift and nothing to hand back at the end, because the identity travels with the garment. Useful where uniforms are already assigned and tracked.
Stickers and hard tags
Adhesive NFC tags for equipment, doors, vehicles, shelves, and windows. An asset gets its own identity surface: what it is, who owns it, its manual, its service history, who to call.
Implants
Injectable NFC transponders exist, they work, and IDConnect can issue a credential to one. We will support an individual who chooses it. We will not help an organization make it a condition of employment, and we do not recommend it as a workforce deployment — a credential you cannot hand back is not a credential you can revoke.
Two different radios. Most people are told they are the same.
If you already issue badges, this is the thing worth knowing, and most vendors will not lead with it. Older access-control systems run at 125 kHz — low frequency, often called prox. Phones read at 13.56 MHz — NFC. They are not the same radio and they are not interchangeable.
So if your current badges are 125 kHz, no software on earth will make them tap to a phone. That is not a product limitation to engineer around; the phone simply has no receiver for it. The way to get one badge that does both is a card with both chips in it.
| 125 kHz — legacy prox | 13.56 MHz — NFC | |
|---|---|---|
| Can a phone read it? | No — no phone has a 125 kHz receiver | Yes — every NFC phone, no app required |
| Can it hold a web address? | No — a fixed facility code and card number only | Yes — a URL, a vCard, or a smart action |
| What it is actually for | Door readers, time clocks, legacy access control | Tap to share, tap to pay, tap to open a page |
| How hard is it to copy? | Trivially — commodity tools clone LF prox in seconds | Depends on the chip; cryptographic options exist |
The thirty-second way to find out what you have
Photograph the front and back of one badge, and the model number printed on one of your card readers. That settles it. Everything before those two photos is guesswork — including ours.
Send us the two photos and we will tell you what is possible →One more thing we would rather say than not: a 125 kHz prox estate is trivially cloneable with commodity hardware, and has been for over a decade. If that is what you are running, the badge conversation is really a security conversation, and we would rather have that one first.
The same credential, in six very different rooms.
Retail and grocery
Thousands of associates, constant turnover, and a badge that has to open doors.
- One badge per associate that opens doors and carries the digital identity
- Issued the day HR says they start; dead the hour HR says they left
- Store number, department, and title live on the credential record, so a transfer is an update rather than a reissue
- Replace a lost badge without touching the door system
Restaurants and hospitality
The table is the customer touchpoint. Put identity on it.
- Table toppers to the menu, order page, or reviews — no printed QR to reprint
- Change the destination without replacing a single physical unit
- Per-table analytics that tell you which seats actually get used
- Staff cards for front of house, dual-frequency where the back door needs it
Events and conferences
Identity that is provisioned on Monday and gone by Friday.
- Wristbands or badges issued in bulk, live immediately
- Attendees exchange contact details by tap, no app download
- Speakers and staff get a distinct credential class
- Everything revokes at the end of the event, in one action
Facilities and manufacturing
Where the access system predates the smartphone.
- Dual-frequency credentials bridge legacy prox readers and time clocks
- Wristbands and fobs for roles where a lanyard is a snag hazard
- Equipment tags that carry manuals, service history, and the right contact
- Contractor credentials that expire on a date you set when you issue them
Field and client-facing teams
The people who introduce your company to strangers.
- A card that is always current, because the card is a pointer, not a print run
- Title changes propagate without a reorder
- Vehicle and equipment tags in the same governed system
- Works offline as a QR when a tap is awkward or the phone is locked down
Agents and non-human identities
Software that acts on your behalf needs to be identifiable too.
- BI agents hold first-class identities alongside people
- Capability declarations and audit trails per agent
- The same revocation path as a human identity
- A physical credential can be issued to the workstation an agent runs on
A credential is only as good as the day you take it back.
Issuing badges is easy. Every organization does it. The part that quietly goes wrong is the other end: someone leaves, and their badge keeps working because revoking it was a separate manual job that nobody owned.
On Enterprise, IDConnect takes its instructions from your HR system over SCIM — the open provisioning standard. HR stays the source of truth for who works here, and the credential simply follows. Revocation flows downhill, in one direction, automatically.
The identity and its credential are created before their first shift, with the right title, site, and access already attached.
A transfer or promotion updates the record. The badge in their pocket does not need reissuing.
HR marks them terminated. The identity is revoked, and every surface projected from it goes with it — doors included.
If your HR platform already feeds an identity governance layer rather than talking to applications directly, we integrate at that layer instead. Either way, nobody files a ticket to switch a badge off.
A credential proves who you are. It is not a leash.
Everything on this page can be used well or badly, and the difference is rarely technical. So we will state our line plainly: we build credentials that identify people at a door, at a desk, or at a table. We do not build continuous location tracking of staff, and we will not help make an implanted credential a condition of employment.
If a deployment would cross that line, we would rather tell you during the quote than after the hardware arrives.
Not sure which form factor fits?
Tell us what your people are doing with their hands and what your doors already read. That is usually enough for us to give you a straight answer.