OwnID Delivers Passwordless Authentication for Carrefour Belgium

Carrefour Belgium, a part of the broader European supermarket giant Carrefour, has teamed up with OwnID to implement passwordless authentication for customers on its online shop.

“We were looking into ways to reduce friction and improve security. OwnID’s passwordless authentication solution uses biometric mechanisms, such as Passkeys, to verify a user’s identity,” explained Carrefour’s head of digital commerce, Jean-Philippe Blerot. “This allows Carrefour’s customers to easily and securely access their accounts, without the need to remember a complex password.”

OwnID’s solution does just that. From its outset, the startup leveraged the biometric mechanisms available on contemporary smartphone – namely fingerprints sensors and camera-based facial recognition – to unlock a locally stored cryptographic key. This authentication solution, offered through an API that could be used to implement it in apps and websites, helped to attract $6.2 million in seed funding last year.

It also happened to revolve around the same fundamental authentication concept used in the passkey solution pioneered last year by Apple, W3C, and the FIDO Alliance, in partnership with Google and Microsoft. OwnID was therefore quick to embrace passkeys and has proven to be a strong proponent, launching a WordPress plugin to bring passkey support to WooCommerce stores in November, and a similar plugin for Shopify Plus stores the next month.

OwnID will likewise include passkey support in its passwordless authentication solution for Carrefour Belgium. And while the solution will enhance security for Carrefour’s customers, OwnID co-founder and CEO Dor Shany emphasized its utility in helping the company to identify and better serve regular shoppers.

“Through our work with leading brands, we have found out that identified users are significantly more valuable than unknown visitors,” he said. “At OwnID, our mission is to help brands increase the number of identified customers, and we believe that our instant login experience is a valuable tool in achieving that goal.”

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April 6, 2023 – by Alex Perala