Such a move would rob businesses of a reliable and widely used identity-verification method while doing little to bolster consumer privacy, said Randy Lively Jr., CEO of the American Financial Services Association in Washington.

Lively was one of several industry representatives who testified at a hearing last week on the use of Social Security numbers in commerce. Lively spoke before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

"The Social Security number is the only unique identifier in our country that enables a credit grantor, or a credit bureau, or a bank, or an insurance company, or an investment firm to be sure that the consumer they are doing business with" is legitimate, he said. Any attempt to change that use could disrupt the nation's economy, Lively argued.

While concerns about the misuse of Social Security numbers and their link to identity theft are valid, Lively said lawmakers need to understand of the consequences of barring their use for commercial purposes. "What would be put in place if that number were to go away and a new identifier was put in place? And wouldn't that identifier be susceptible to the same kind of fraud?" Lively asked.

The hearing comes at a time of heightened consumer and congressional attention to what has been a stream of high-profile data breaches that have exposed the confidential information of millions of Americans and raised fears of widespread identity theft.