You hear a lot of biometrics and banking, but what have you seen in your life as a bank customer? Passwords, passwords, and more passwords, quite likely.
Yesterday, I signed up with Airbnb and noticed the “Login with American Express” option. By coincidence, this happened to be the very day the service launched. There was also a “Verify with Facebook” option. These linked services are great; they can save time and lots of tapping, especially on smartphones.
But linked services also require a good memory for your passwords, and in a different context from the ones in which you usually use them. So I spent a lot of the day resetting passwords and verifying my identity by clicking links in emails.
Can the death of passwords be nigh? With the explicit goal of killing the password, mBank, a mobile-first bank from Poland, has gone all-in on biometrics, launching thumbprint logins for corporate customers on iOS.
“64% of all our corporate customers already use a smartphone equipped with a system that enables them to log in by a finger,” said Marcin Gierlicz, electronic banking project specialist with mBank.”We have decided to introduce this method as it guarantees the highest level of security and convenience while logging in via mobile device.”
But mBank’s work goes beyond logins. In April, mBank announced mTM, a peer-to-peer money transfer application that also uses a swipe and PIN to authorize payments. Dutch payments firm PayU worked with mBank on the project. This allows funds to be transmitted outside of the login area of the mobile banking app, a significant reduction in friction.
Awards are nothing new for mBank — one of its first came from Bank Innovation — but the bank was given top prize for digital marketing by Efma and Accenture in a recent study.
Learn more about biometric authentication at Bank Innovation Israel in Tel Aviv, Nov. 10-11. Request your invite here.