Customers of some Swiss banks now have access to safe-deposit boxes for their digital data.
St Galler Kantonalbank in Zurich is offering customers an account with SecureSafe, which stores electronic records remotely via the Internet, free for three months when they bank online, DSwiss, the company that offers the service, said Wednesday.
According to DSwiss, Kantonalbank is one of three banks in Switzerland to offer SecureSafe.
SecureSafe lets users store passwords, PIN codes, personal documents, financial records, PDF documents and other information electronically. Account holders can retrieve the information via a computer, smartphone or tablet, and also can designate their SecureSafe vault as a delivery location for statements from banks and financial firms.
"Swiss banks such as St Galler Kantonalbank, Zürcher Kantonalbank and the Neue Aargauer Bank have reviewed our high safety standards and are confident that their customers will benefit from the SecureSafe online service, which is like a digital safety deposit box for confidential passwords and files," Christian Schwarzer, chief executive of DSwiss, said in a news release.
SecureSafe protects all of a user's information and log in credentials with a password that only the user knows, according to DSwiss. The company provides each user with a code they can use when they forget their passwords.
Prices for SecureSafe run from a free account that can hold 10 megabytes of data and 50 passwords, up to an account that can store unlimited passwords and 100 gigabytes of data, for $12.90 a month. Users also can designate one or more beneficiaries of the account and its contents in the event the user dies or becomes unable to recover the information.
Though the idea of a digital safe seems obvious, giving the popularity of cloud-based storage services such as DropBox, few U.S. banks have offered the service. Wells Fargo (WFC) introduced a virtual safe-deposit box in 2008 that it discontinued last March, citing insufficient demand.
