The Entersekt blog.

A bank is only as successful as the depth of its customers’ trust. With new players venturing into the realm of financial services and competing for customers, banks have reached a critical juncture in their digital transformation journey. Rik Coeckelbergs of The Banking Scene looks at how traditional financial services providers could safeguard the longstanding bonds of trust they share with their customers and increase their relevance in the era of open banking.

Entersekt asked AMI to explain how Brazil’s incoming instant payment system works. As a global specialist in user authentication and secure QR payments, we support the Brazilian Central Bank’s vision of a nation-wide digital payments system, free and as accessible to the unbanked as it is to cardholders.

Exceptionally challenging on so many fronts, 2020’s wholesale upsetting of everyday life impacted financial services and payments pretty much immediately. e-Commerce and digital banking rates skyrocketed, especially among demographics who had previously stuck with cash and in-branch shopping, but then so did fraud, an age-old problem that intensified during the pandemic.

The story behind digital authentication sounds familiar. Except, it didn’t start in a garage or basement, but in an MIT lab in 1961. There, a group of computer scientists got together and devised the concept of passwords. Little did they know the anguish it would cause over the next 50 years!

Sure, banks need to digitize if they’re to meet their customers’ needs. It’s not that simple, though. Those same customers also want to feel secure and enjoy smooth-as-silk, cross-channel digital banking experiences. So, what happens when regulatory standards and mandates demand a change of course?

In 2020, for the first time ever, banking apps have overtaken all other banking channels as the one that survey respondents say they use the most. In this article we share highlights on how central banking apps have become to consumers’ financial lives in the wake of the pandemic.

If we were to assign 2020 its very own buzzword, it’d have to be “Coronavirus”. Yes, we’re all tired of hearing it but globally the impact of the outbreak has been immense – and it’s far from over. For e-commerce and digital banking, though, there has been an undeniable silver lining: an upsurge in online activity.

As consumers prepare for some of the biggest retail events of the year, this shopping season will deliver some firsts. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, physical stores will have to enforce social distancing and limit the number of feet through their doors. Frantic shoppers, wary to venture out in any case, will flock online to get their annual fix.

There are two central goals of PSD2: to protect the consumer by increasing the security of payment mechanisms, and to promote competition in the pan-European payments market. Unfortunately, SMS OTP technology falls short on both.

There’s no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the accelerated adoption of mobile and online banking faster than anyone could have anticipated. Numerous studies have attested to this, for example, as of July 2020, 14.2 million Americans had selected a digital-only bank to be their primary account holder. That’s a 67% jump from January 2020.