The Royal Bank of Scotland has announced Touch ID support, according to a Reuters article. RBS and NatWest customers who use iPhones can now use the fingerprint-scanning Touch ID system to log in to their mobile banking apps.
The move makes RBS the first British bank to allow this kind of biometric login. According to RBS officials, the decision to embrace TouchID is the product of an effort to keep pace with the digital revolution underway in banking; last year the bank announced that it was going to invest more than a billion pounds into mobile banking efforts and upgrades. That was a prudent move; more and more financial transaction are being done online – and that’s why the adoption of biometric security of the kind offered by TouchID is so important, as new vulnerabilities are emerging online.
The announcement also appears to be good news for Apple; 80 percent of the bank is owned by the British government, which means that the support of Touch ID is a kind of government endorsement. Apple enjoyed a similar tip of the cap from the White House last week, as US President Obama announced that the federal government would support the use of Apple Pay for transactions with citizens.
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February 18, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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