System and Method for Physical Access Control

The present invention provides, in one aspect, a system and method for managing authentication tokens that operate across multiple types or physical resources binding the tokens to one or more external electronic Identity Providers; generating tokens; authenticating the tokens at multiple physical resources; managing access to physical resources by linking the tokens to the electronic identities; translating the tokens to the appropriate physical token type based on infrastructure services available at the point of service; validating tokens at the physical resource; tracking and conveying usage information; and making use of social group relationships and other data defined by individual usage to, among other things, simplify the process of granting user-generated credentials to persons connected to a given individual via the Identity Provider or an external social network, for example.