BankID in Norway is used by 80% of adults to prove their identity to various organisations including all government departments, all country’s banks and mobile operators

Norway’s BankID is to begin a pilot programme to test in-app authentication and biometric logins for one-click access to financial services. Originally developed to simplify online banking access, BankID is now used by 80% of all adults in Norway to prove their identity to various organisations across Norway, including all government departments, and all of the country’s banks and mobile operators.

BankID currently uses a combination of hardware-based authentication (key fobs) and one-time-password generation for authentication. The company has contracted with local supplier Encap Security to test the vendor’s Smart Authentication platform that removes the need for key fobs by securely enabling authentication to take place inside an app.

A recent upgrade to Encap’s platform includes support for both Apple’s Touch ID and Android’s fingerprint API, making biometric authentication for many new devices possible.

„Instead of using an extra device to authenticate, customers will only need the service provider app and their BankID-password to access services.”, according to the press release.

The pilot-app Smarter Authentication was developed to show what the BankID user experience of the future will look like. The target groups are developers, integrators, merchants who either use BankID or are interested in doing so, to provide their customers with a simple yet secure on-boarding and authentication process. The pilot-app provides a sneak peak into the new BankID-solution in pre-production.

“We invite merchants and integrators of BankID to experience simpler, more flexible and secure multi-factor authentication which eliminates the additional codes and pieces of hardware that often frustrate users, months before the release this autumn,” says Frode Beckmann Nilsen, Head of Development at BankID Norway.

This autumn BankID will release the changes in the infrastructure that makes BankID more flexible. Once banks have integrated and launched the technology with their apps and other services, BankID customers will be able to enjoy this new user experience. Some banks such as SpareBank1 and Danske Bank already have apps in the market that can be easily enabled for use with the enhanced BankID offering.

“BankID is an incredibly popular, highly advanced system that makes signing up to and using multiple services across Norway simple and easy,” said Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen, CEO, 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.”