What’s most important to you when you decide to do some mobile banking? Do you prefer jumping through hoops to make sure your transaction is secure, or do you like an easy interface that allows you to bank quickly and efficiently?
According to mobile authentication and identification provider accells, you shouldn’t have to choose.
PYMNTS.com spoke with Eckhard Ortwein, accells’ chief executive officer, to discuss why his company thinks it will make major waves in the mobile security industry.
accells is a mobile identity authentication service that creates a link between a smartphone app, notification service and cloud-based server – or what Eckhard calls a “mobile identification triangle” – that consumers can use for both their professional and private lives.
The platform is designed to provide more security than an average account verifier, but to afford its users that security without having to go through tedious checkpoints. In Ortwein’s words, both facets of mobile identification are important to consumers and businesses alike.
“More people are interacting more often today, and so it’s more important to confirm and protect your identity,” Ortwein said.
“This phenomenon has reached businesses as well. There’s a need for higher security than usernames and passwords — a need for solutions that are more usable and less costly than hardware, and more secure than SMS or one-time passwords. “
A platform like accells provides obvious but exciting opportunities for mobile banking. Ortwein described security as what prevents many mobile payments services from offering a more complete set of banking tools. If accells is able to take care of the identification and authentication processes, mobile financial platforms will be freer to offer transactional capabilities.
“Mobile banking offerings don’t give you a lot of functionality other than looking up your balance – it doesn’t offer a lot of transaction functionality yet because banks haven’t figure out the right way to securely transact,” Ortwein points out.
While Ortwein points to accells’ ease of use as a consumer draw, he lists other functions that businesses will find useful as well. If one of a consumer’s accounts linked to accells is breached, accells locks down the affected mobile identity, which should appeal to all integrated accounts as well.
“accells really implements the perfect mix of ease of use, security and cost of use,” Ortwein said.
For a simple demonstration of how accells works, watch the video below.
Eckhard Ortwein
Chief Executive Officer, accells
Eckhard Ortwein heads up accells technologies Ltd. (“accells”) as CEO and Co-Founder since Jan 2012.
accells Mobile Identity enables people to use their smartphone for fast, easy and secure identification and access to any cloud, web, VPN, social media or mobile service across any channel – online, mobile, call center, or at the POS. accells can also aggregate the longtail of service providers two sided markets (eventually in an NFC economy).
Eckhard has spent 20 years working as an industry executive and management consultant for global corporations and start-ups in the telecommunications, financial services, travel and transport and consumer goods industries. He is a sought-after speaker on mobile commerce strategies, including mobile payments, NFC, cloud-based services, digital ID and authentication He is a regular speaker at high-profile industry events.
In 2008, Eckhard successfully sold his own m-payment venture paybox solutions AG to Sybase – a SAP Company. Eckhard co-founded paybox in 1999, acting as CTO and COO until 2003, delivering the first mass-marketable mobile payment solutions in five European markets. From 2003-2006, as Co-Manager Mobile Commerce for mobilkom austria in Vienna, he turned mobilkom into the leading provider of mobile commerce services worldwide and facilitated the first national operator consortium for mobile payments in Austria. Back to paybox as CEO (2006-2008), he set-up the company for success and enabled mCommerce services for leading operators such as Vodafone, Telefonica o2, Maxis, The Royal Bank of Canada and Deutsche Telekom. His drive led to the successful transaction by Sybase. Eckhard ran the mCommerce EMEA business for Sybase/SAP until December 2010. Then, he founded 4-Ventures (4V), a preferred business growth enabler for venture companies and investors in mobile, payment and software industries. 4V has become a recognized NFC consulting company supporting Telefonica o2 in its go-to-market efforts and supporting several startups in the positioning and go-to-market – among others accells.
Before joining paybox, Eckhard was a Senior Consultant for Arthur D. Little International in Germany and California. His main focus was on IT-enabled innovation projects worldwide. Prior to that, Eckhard was Group Manager at Procter & Gamble.
Eckhard holds a Master of Business Administration and Computer Science from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
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