Comment 8 for bug 1663295

C/W MARS would be interested in this development as well.

We turned on the OverDrive Instant Digital Card (IDC) that uses Cognito.

Here is some feedback on that service:

1- libraries/consortia provide a list of all zipcodes in their service area
2- Cognito uses a mobile phone number to verify billing address zipcode is in the service area
3- Cognito only works with US mobile numbers
4- In OverDrive IDC Mobile numbers can be used once and are used as a barcode. Only works on library/consortia collection (does not allow access to Advantage or local econtent)
5- Mobile numbers billed to an address outside the service area will not validate
6- Sometimes Cognito is unable to verify billing address zipcode and validation fails

In OverDrive you are charged per successful lookup. They have waived the fee through June 30th.

From what we have seen so far, only about 30-35% of IDC signups are new patrons.
The majority already have a libary card that is valid.
Some have cards that have expired.
Some have cards that are blocked.

The nice thing about the Evergreen pending patron file is it allows library staff to review and verify patron information before creating a new registration.

Ideally we would like some sort of validation within Evergreen to check if the patron already exists and before paying to do a 3rd party authentication.

We also would want to add CAPTCHA (https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1821093) and perhaps IP validation to make sure request is coming from the country the library(ies) are located in.