Mobile growth drives BNZ security evolution

April 18, 2012

Mobile growth drives BNZ security evolution

BNZ has made logging in to its mobile banking apps simpler and smarter thanks to a New Zealand-first security innovation.

The bank’s Wellington-based development team have come up with a system that incorporates secure two factor authentication into the mobile application itself, removing the need to manually enter login details while using mobile banking. This means there is now one step less required to log in to BNZ mobile banking.

For users of BNZ’s mobile apps for iPhone and Android, the newly available Mobile NetGuard will replace the NetGuard cards used to provide two factor authentication when logging in to BNZ mobile banking while on the go.

BNZ director - retail, Andy Symons, explains what the arrival of Mobile NetGuard means for customers.

“Our NetGuard system provides BNZ internet banking customers with a safe and reliable form of second factor authentication. It ensures online banking is secure, but the process of having to enter an access number, a password and a separate set of values from a NetGuard card doesn’t gel with the whole mobile experience.

“What Mobile NetGuard does is turn the phone itself into the NetGuard device meaning customers need only enter their password to log in via our iPhone and Android apps. In the background, NetGuard is still there generating a unique security code for each and every session without impacting the user experience”, says Symons.

Use of BNZ Mobile has proven incredibly popular with customers. Since the release of the iPhone app in June 2011 and New Zealand’s first Android banking app in August, BNZ has seen monthly logins jump from 60,000 to 180,000. In just nine months some $250,000,000 worth of transactions have been made using BNZ’s mobile offerings.

Click here for statistics on BNZ Mobile Banking security evolution.

ENDS

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