Social verification specialist Trulioo has teamed up with ID document verification startup IDChecker.com to develop a mobile technology that could replace the university student ID card.

The partnership will produce a customizable mobile app called Mobilekey that promises to automate student enrollment, including remote global identity verification and secure student credentials issuance. The app will also support on-campus payments and other smart phone transactions.

The technology is expected to simplify on campus payments as well as enable students to remotely learn – and graduate – from universities in over 200 countries.

The partnership is backed by nearly $500,000 in funding from international government grant program, EUREKA, which supports high-priority projects involving collaboration and trade between companies in different participating countries.

As a new source of revenue, traditional Canadian and U.S. universities have been pursuing distance education opportunities more aggressively. However, U.S. law requires that each student identity be verified prior to issuing a diploma – a major obstacle when it comes to accepting tuition from overseas students.

Moreover, it’s difficult and expensive for universities to do this at scale, having to rely on staff to visually inspect scanned or faxed copies of passports from around the world, explains Michael Hagen, CEO of IDchecker.com.

“The app will verify identity by asking students to sign into their social networking account, as well as snapping a photo of their government-issued ID card with their smartphone camera,” says Hagen. “The combination of social verification with automated document verification is powerful and global.”

If the app works well in education, the folks at Trulioo and IDChecker feel that it might have application in other sectors including banking, gaming and health care where there are similar challenges with identity and secure credentials.