A system and method for consumer-side authorization and authentication is disclosed. In one embodiment, the method comprises receiving a request for a credential from a business-side party, matching the credential request to a set of available credentials, the available credentials comprising consumer-side information. The credential is retrieved from a credential store, and the authorization of the business-side party to receive the credential is evaluated before returning a response. In another embodiment, the system comprises a receiver module adapted to receive credential requests from business-side parties. The credential request is passed to a selection and matching module for matching against consumer-side credentials. The credential is retrieved from a storage and retrieval module, but is not passed until an authorization module allows a sender module to return a credential response to the business-side party.