Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide practitioners of management a sense of importance in providing a balance between providing customer service and still safeguarding personal identity through a national identity program. Design/methodology/approach – A review of the applied literature on national identity programs and a personal interview of 252 professional and semi‐professional people was conducted, representative of the service industries located in the metropolitan section of Pittsburgh, PA. Findings – Via multiple linear regression, χ 2 , and factor analysis, virtually all the basic personal information and customer relationship management (CRM)‐related tenets of benefits with identity program, global security concerns, technology enabled, personal identity concerns, standardization concerns, wealth and education factors, cost of capita, online experiences, and confront with personal information, were found be statistically significant and positively related to the degree of invasion of privacy factor. Practical implications – Although, there are many beneficial reasons why national identity programs should be implemented, such as security, convenience, and enhancing CRM‐related strategies, the vast majority of citizens have many fears and feel there are too many risks involved. Originality/value – Few empirical studies existing in the literature, especially from a business perspective concerning national identity initiatives. These issues regarding national identification cards and CRM were addressed through exploratory data reduction analyses. Although, there were several significant and negative issues associated with implementation, in general, if citizens are better educated about the benefits of a national identification card they are more willing to adopt it and pay for the program.
