Lloyds Testing ‘Tap To Bank’ Tech

Lloyds Bank is testing out how the use of NFC and contactless technology can improve the registration process for those setting up mobile banking, instead of the traditional phone call. The authentication process takes less than 20 seconds to complete and reduces failure attempts, Lloyds says.

Lloyds Bank currently has around 2.5 million active mobile banking customers — with over 1.5 million customers downloading the app — and over 10 million active online banking users, Finextra reports. The bank recorded over 1 billion logins to its online banking site in the past 12 months.

Lloyds’ “tap to bank” technology has so far been tested on over 125 people, enabling them to use their Lloyds Bank contactless debit card as a way of securely authenticating their identity when setting up the mobile banking app. The vast majority of those involved in the testing found the process is “simpler, quicker and easier” to use, Lloyd said in its statement.

Director of Innovation and Digital Development Marc Lien said: “With the widespread take up of contactless cards and most new smartphones now having NFC technology, this tap to bank trial is developing enhancements to banking processes that many people could benefit from.”

Instead of receiving a phone call from an automated system to complete the mobile banking registration process, customers will be able to simply tap their contactless debit card against their NFC-enabled Android smartphone and instantly authenticate themselves.

Lloyds Bank also now has a new authentication method available to customers setting up certain requests through Internet Banking on their desktop PC. Instead of receiving a phone call to verify the process, customers can choose to log into the mobile banking app to verify their requests.

This process is available for customers setting up new beneficiaries, setting up standing orders, making international payments and resetting passwords via their Internet Banking on desktop. Lloyds says it anticipates that in the future, this innovation could also be applied to other tasks, such as authenticating new payments.

Customer authentication on these transactions are a lot quicker than the current automated phone call, now taking less than 20 seconds to complete. In addition, deaf or hard of hearing customers are also able to benefit from this faster process, instead of receiving an automated phone call and following text-based instructions to authenticate their actions.

There are clear advantages to using mobile devices as authentication, as Doc Vaidhyanathan, VP Product Management, Digital Payments at CA Technologies, explained in a recent PYMNTS interview. “What the mobile device will let people do is to continue using their devices when they go to work, to the bank, to the airport and other places, and the phone will figure out how to authenticate everything it needs to,” said Vaidhyanathan. “It will become easier from a perspective of authenticating.”