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Easy and secure online identification through your bank

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Banks would soon offer a service that allowed their customers to identify themselves online to other organisations. Customers who chose to use the service could identify themselves using their own bank’s secure and trusted login method.

This could be used, for example, with insurers, government bodies or online shops. Customers would no longer have to request and remember separate access codes.

Consumers remain in control

Consumers explicitly authorise their bank to provide the data needed to identify them to an organisation. This gives them full control over which data are shared with which party. The data can vary by organisation. For one company, the bank might ask permission to share a customer’s name and place of residence; for another, it might ask permission to share their date of birth.

Certainty about identity online

As digital services increased, companies and institutions had a growing need for certainty about the identity of online customers and users. Someone wishing to take out an insurance policy, for example, must identify themselves using a legally valid identity document. Banks could provide that certainty because every customer had already identified themselves when opening a bank account.

Consumer pilots

The first pilots in which customers could use their bank’s login method to identify themselves online to other organisations would begin in early 2016 under the coordination of the Dutch Payments Association. Pilots would be held with an insurer and the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration. Other companies and institutions could also take part in pilots the following year.

Evaluation

Once the experiences of consumers and organisations in the pilots had been evaluated, the banks’ joint service would be offered more widely in the market.

Bank customers would then be able to choose the convenience and security of their own bank’s login method to identify themselves on different websites.

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