BankMobile, a mobile-first U.S. bank, has partnered with digital identity security firm Vasco Data Security for more secure mobile transactions through the use of multifactor authentication.
BankMobile customers will route their transactions through Vasco’s Digipass for Apps solution as well as its RASP (Runtime Application Self-Protection) solution, both of which are designed to run invisibly in the background to protect users from fraud.
Investment in security does not end there. New customers’ identities will also be checked against 18 different sources during onboarding, according to an American Banker report.
The number of online and mobile banking customers is increasing each year; and 2016 was the first year in history that mobile browsing rates topped online numbers. BankMobile, a division of Customers Bank, likewise approaches banking entirely through the smartphone lens.
BankMobile developers can customize Vasco’s solution with different types of protection including Device ID—which authenticates the physical phone—and fingerprint biometric ID—which authenticates the physical human making the transaction.
With the increase of online payments, combined with the number of mobile users in the U.S. who prefer to transact directly from their bank account, and security for mobile banking can no longer be treated as a perk—it has to be a given feature of the service.
Additionally, better security for mobile banking might make consumers more likely to choose mobile payments over other forms of payment; mobile payments at the point-of-sale did not increase as fervently at the start of the 2016 holiday season as some might have hoped.
“Online was 9.4% of all of the sales done on Black Friday, which did grow a point from last year—so we do still like that in-store experience,” says Sarah Quinlan, SVP Market Insights for Mastercard, adding, “Alternative payment [usage] is clearly increasing; Masterpass was really the first to… be there in the store and online, and that omnichannel experience is critical.”
Mobile payments may be one of the key factors of growth for banking and fintech over the next five years, which means the future could look quite different in 2020—so long as the service is protected, of course.