Norway’s BankID selects Encap Security platform for digital ID pilot

Encap Security announced its smart authentication platform has been selected by Norway’s mobile identity solution, BankID, for a pilot program beginning this month to test in-app authentication.

The pilot will leverage Norway’s high level of smartphone penetration by developing a BankID that is mobile and delivers a seamless user experience to end-users.

Initially developed to make the online banking access process easier, BankID is currently used by 80% of all adults in Norway to verify their identity to various organizations across Norway, including all government agencies, and all of the country’s banks and mobile operators.

According to Encap Security, BankID has achieved this by simplifying customer identification, onboarding, and ongoing use of services across ecommerce, finance and telecoms among others.

BankID uses a combination of hardware-based authentication (key fobs) and one-time-password generation for authentication.

By integrating Smarter Authentication, merchants and integrators of BankID can provide a more flexible and secure multi-factor authentication without any additional codes and extra hardware before the official release this autumn.

Smarter Authentication is a device-based multi-factor authentication platform that eliminates the need for key fobs by enabling the authentication process to occur inside an app.

The in-app authentication process avoids context switching as well as delivers a consistent experience across all customer touch points – mobile, online, phone and in-branch — expanding smartphone biometrics to millions of users.

“The launch of BankID in 2004 confirmed Norway’s lead when it came to using technology to improve banking and identity,” said Frode Beckmann Nilsen, head of development at BankID Norway. “Now we want to make sure we remain ahead of the curve by creating a new experience – dropping the need to carry around key fobs or copy and paste from another app – while also ensuring the highest security standards. Each bank will provide an app and introduce it to the customers in their own pace. Our purpose with this Encap-app has been to provide a useful showroom for our next future proof BankID-experience.”

Encap Security recently released Smarter Authentication 3.1, which includes support for both Apple’s Touch ID and Android’s fingerprint API, making biometric authentication for many new devices possible.

Smarter Authentication also offers extra protection against Man-in-the-Middle attacks, and its use of App Defender technology ensures that it is safe to use even on jailbroken or malware-infected devices.

“BankID is an incredibly popular, highly advanced system that makes signing up and using to multiple services across Norway simple and easy,” said Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen, CEO of Encap Security. “With Norwegians increasingly accessing information and transacting on their smart devices BankID needs to evolve to deliver the experience users are demanding today, and the capabilities they will expect tomorrow. By adopting a mobile-first approach BankID will cement Norway’s place as the world leader in digital identity.”

Article Topics

BankID (Norway)  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  Encap Security  |  identity verification  |  multifactor authentication  |  pilot project