Deutsche Bank to make online banking safer than ever before

Deutsche Bank is working on a new technology that should make online banking and paying via mobile both easier to use, while also being harder to compromise. The system hopes to do away with passwords, in favour of a combination of a number of other measures to identify the user.

The large number of personal features required to access the account should make unauthorised access to the account near impossible

The technology, which is being created in conjunction with the firm Callsign, will make use of various features of the bank account holder – such as the location they are in, the way in which they hold their phone, the force of pressure used on the mobile phones touch screen, fingerprints, and facial recognition.

The idea is that even if parts of the identity of an account user are taken – for instance, if a thief was able to somehow acquire their finger prints – the other metrics required will block their access. The large number of personal features required to access the account should make unauthorised access to the account near impossible.

At the same time, the sheer number of metrics required to access the account mean that not all of the metrics need to be satisfied for a user to login. If a specific number of the metrics are recorded as correct, but a number of others not, the account should still be able to be accessed.

Nick Doddy, Deutsche’s regional innovation manager, told the Financial Times: “If you’ve broken your right arm and… you’re at home and now you’re using your left hand, it will say her location is good, her PIN is good, her biometric is good, but she’s now handling it in a different way, so it might say ‘give me a facial recognition’.”

The sophisticated nature of the technology should give a higher level of confidence to banks that the user is who they say they are, which should result in banks allowing customers to execute higher value transactions.