Capital One Debuts AirKey to Help Banks Lock Out Fraudsters

Capital One is offering its AirKey anti-fraud authentication tool to financial institutions.

“Fraud is on the rise and costing billions in losses each year, making the need to protect consumers more important than ever,” the lender said in a Wednesday (Oct. 9) news release. “Developed over the past seven years by Capital One, AirKey turns credit and debit cards into a tap-based authentication method that offers financial institutions a new and convenient tool in the fight against fraud.”

“AirKey makes it easy for customers to authenticate wherever their financial institution requires it” by tapping an AirKey-enabled card to a smartphone, according to the release. From there, financial institutions can authenticate customers as they try to complete a 3D Secure transaction, access a virtual card and more.

AirKey, used by Capital One customers for more than four years, is the company’s most popular card activation tool, and more than 75 million Capital One cards are equipped with AirKey technology in the market, the release said.

“Customers prefer options when it comes to authentication — and having more tools in your toolbox to help prevent fraud is a necessity,” Tom Poole, senior vice president of emerging payments at Capital One, said in the release. “We want to make sure our industry is able to continue strengthening fraud prevention measures for consumers.”

In other authentication news, PYMNTS spoke last week with Adam Lowe of CompoSecure/Arculus, who said the nuances of different authentication methods, especially synced and hardware-bound passkeys, can have implications for financial institutions depending upon them to protect sensitive user data and transactions.

A “synced passkey” offers users the convenience of keeping their login credentials in the cloud and accessing them from a variety of devices, such as those tied to iCloud or Google accounts, he said.

This setup is of particular use for people with multiple devices who need seamless access to their accounts, Lowe said. In theory, even if someone lost their devices, they could quickly recover their login keys by syncing with the cloud. But this convenience has its own set of risks.

“While it’s convenient, it means your login [credentials] are synced in the cloud and, therefore, can be ripped out of the cloud,” Lowe said.

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