Authentication

The ability to program value exchanges without risk of censorship, moderation or theft gives smart contracts a leg up in servicing users who lack a mainstream banking association.

The U.K. bank's new business unit takes advantage of the massive amount of data it stores to offer a new array of products and services, including managing customers' digital identities.

Ryan Singer, CEO and cofounder of startup Blockchain Health, discusses the problems with the traditional "shared secrets" method of verifying identities, and the possibilities opened up by mobile computing devices.

Though the use of a digital identity may take years to go mainstream with consumers, BBVA Compass is thinking about the role that banks should play and taking steps toward being part of the solution.

Banks have to know a lot about their customers, who generally trust them to keep personal information secure. Who better to serve as digital identity providers in a post-password world?

The way we verify people are who they say they are must evolve to reflect new technologies like peer-to-peer platforms and the Internet of Things and the ways millennials live and work.

Around the world, technology companies, governments and even some banks are coming up with new, safer and easier ways for people to prove they are who they say they are. Generally the goal is to allow people to be authenticated once by a trusted identity provider (a role banks could play) rather than share sensitive information with countless third parties, as they do today. Here we highlight just a few of the many organizations innovating in this space.

BMO Financial Group is looking to bring a recent consumer-facing innovation to its corporate customers.

Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook, is set to buy the assets of Jumio in bankruptcy proceedings of the startup focused on online identity verification.

In explaining the bank's commitment to the Chase Pay mobile wallet, an executive told investors in February that the mobile payment landscape was going to get more complicated before it gets simpler.