There is a lot of hype around wearables (smartwatches, fitness bands, etc.) and they may have all kinds of interesting potential. This potential, particularly for banking is still to be determined. However, I believe that there is a great opportunity for certain wearable devices to provide strong authentication and enhance the user experience (see this blog entry). Examples are starting to trickle out:
- RBC recently announced that it has partnered up with a firm called Bionym. Bionym offers a wearable device, the Nymi Band, that can be used for authenticating you to all kinds of products, devices and services (see this video for potential use cases). The device will take the user’s electrocardiogram and use it for authentication purposes. RBC and Bionym are going to test ECG authenticated payments at the point of sale. Sounds pretty cool to me! The Nymi band is a $79 product that can be ordered on Kickstarter.
- Last week, at the AFP Conference, Online Banking Solutions (OBS) showed me a demo of how they are using a smartwatch to authenticate corporate online banking transactions. When the user performs a certain function, an alert is sent to the smartwatch (the demo was shown to me on a Moto360). The user then has to interact with the watch in order to confirm or reject the transaction.
