Financial institutions are in a never-ending battle against fraudsters and must use every bit of technology available to them to combat cybercriminals. The latest firm to aid firms in this fight is fintech, Capital One Financial Corp, with the launch of its AirKey.
Fraud is on the rise and costing billions in losses each year, making the need to protect consumers more important than ever. Developed over the past seven years by Capital One, AirKey turns credit and debit cards into a tap-based authentication method. The new service allows customers to authenticate wherever their financial institution requires it.
With the tap of an AirKey-enabled card to a smartphone, financial institutions can authenticate customers across a variety of use cases, from completing a 3D Secure (3DS) transaction to accessing a virtual card. For Capital One, AirKey is the most popular way customers activate their cards. Capital One has also seen a significant lift in mobile enrollment by offering AirKey.
Tom Poole, senior vice president, emerging payments at Capital One
“Customers prefer options when it comes to authentication—and having more tools in your toolbox to help prevent fraud is a necessity,” said Tom Poole, senior vice president, emerging payments at Capital One. “We want to make sure our industry is able to continue strengthening fraud prevention measures for consumers. AirKey is easy to use and builds on the trust and familiarity that consumers have with credit and debit cards, and we’re excited to bring this unique technology to other financial institutions.”
Perks of AirKey
AirKey has been used by Capital One customers for over four years, and there are more than 75 million Capital One cards equipped with AirKey technology in the market today. AirKey is backed by its patent portfolio, which includes more than 300 US patents and more than 400 issued and allowed patents in other jurisdictions.
With AirKey, financial institutions can increase authentication success and mobile enrollment. It can achieve this as offering multiple authentication methods means customers are more likely to complete the in-flight activity. Furthermore, customers with AirKey-enabled cards can tap to their smartphones to enrol in their financial institution’s mobile application.
Additionally, AirKey strengthens fraud prevention. It offers financial institutions a new authentication method that can be used to protect customers along with more traditional methods like SMS one-time-password (OTP). With a tap, customers can authenticate to complete a 3DS transaction, provision a digital wallet and access a virtual card, among other actions.
Another benefit can be seen as it enhances self-service options. Customers can also activate a new card with a tap to their smartphone. Customers can use AirKey to authenticate transactions without contacting customer service—enabling uninterrupted card usage when travelling overseas with no access to SMS.
Convenient for customers and businesses
Capital One is also working with several partners to make AirKey available to a broad range of financial institutions.
Chris Sparks, managing vice president, card fraud, disputes and AML strategy at Capital One
“At Capital One, we recognise that having a multi-layered approach to fraud prevention is critical to keeping customers safe, and AirKey has offered us another powerful authentication tool to bolster our defenses and protect our customers,” said Chris Sparks, managing vice president, card fraud, disputes and AML strategy at Capital One.
“Technologies are evolving and fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated, but AirKey has proven to be an innovative and effective authentication method. With AirKey, financial institutions can get the efficacy of a hardware token, but the convenience of something their customers already have in their wallets.”
The feature uses near-field communication to enable a credit or debit card to communicate with a smartphone. An applet is embedded into the secure element of a card, creating a cryptogram which is validated upon tapping to a smartphone. AirKey works on iOS & Android operating systems, and customers don’t need to download an additional application to use AirKey.
AirKey takes advantage of the pre-existing card manufacturing processes that financial institutions use, with a unique AirKey identifier tied to each customer at the time of card manufacturing. It also benefits from the existing processes that are in place to continuously verify that a customer’s card remains in good standing and is deactivated if there is any sort of fraud activity or loss of card.
Preventing fraud by any means
Hal Granoff, vice president of strategy at Prove
“Emerging technologies are making it even more critical for financial institutions to have multiple methods to prevent fraud. While reducing fraud is the primary component of these new solutions, improving consumer experiences should also be a key value add,” said Hal Granoff, vice president of strategy at Prove.
“With AirKey, Prove can take customer authentication to the next level by using the credit or debit card and smartphone as hardware authenticators, helping to protect bank customers while offering a frictionless experience.”
The post Capital One Turns Debit and Credit Cards Into Authentication Methods With AirKey appeared first on The Fintech Times.
