Tag: rbc

The Royal Bank of Canada will now be embracing Android M biometric support for authentication.

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has now announced that it is going to become the first Canadian financial institution to use biometrics for mobile security by way of fingerprint scanning for authorization.

This will allow RBC to use fingerprints as another layer of security authorization for its mobile wallet app.

This announcement also stated that the mobile security will be possible through the addition of new features available through Android. Google first announced those new features at its developers conference. They will become available through the use of Android M, which presently remains in the form of a developer preview. That said, it is expected that this version of the software will be rolled out later on in 2015. It has been speculated that the Android M rollout will likely occur at the same time as the release of two new mobile devices under the Nexus brand.

The Android M mobile security feature will allow fingerprints to be detected and analyzed for authentication.

This will allow any app to be able to use the feature to detect the user’s fingerprint and integrate it into its capabilities for authentication.

According to the RBC digital, payments and cards division executive vice president, Linda Mantia, “This new feature heightens security while providing an exceptional client experience with a simpler and quicker process for authentication and payment.”

Furthermore, beyond fingerprint scanning, the mobile wallet app from RBC will also be adding further digital security features through the Confirm Credentials APIs that have been integrated into Android M. This will make it possible for device users to be able to gain access to secure apps from banks and password managers without the need for having to create new PINs, passwords, or other types of security patterns.

RBC will be rolling out its complete wallet app set of features later in 2015 at which point it is expected to make a relatively large update. At that time, it will be integrating the new mobile security features as well as public Host Card Emulation support.

The application from the Royal Bank of Canada now supports host card emulation to broaden usage capabilities.

The mobile payments app from the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has now announced the addition of support for host card emulation (HCE), in a move that it says will give Canadians the ability to use Android based smartphones to complete purchase transactions without having to worry about having the right type of SIM card or being on the correct network.

The bank has built on its existing platform, called the RBC Secure Cloud to encourage smartphone payments use.

According to RBC, this change to its app is “allowing Canadians to pay with most Android mobile phones without worrying about being on the right mobile network or having the right SIM card.” The service will give customers with virtually any Android smartphone that is NFC technology enabled the opportunity to make mobile payments at merchants equipped with Interact Flash contactless POS terminals. The smartphones will function as an alternative to using a traditional debit card.

This new mobile payments technology will be piloted over the winter months by employees of RBC.

They will be using a number of different mobile networks and types of Android device, said the bank. This trial will not yet be testing the support for MasterCard, Visa, and other types of credit card, and other types of value added service, though the bank did confirm that those would be coming “shortly.”

The RBC executive vice president for digital, payments and cards, Linda Mantia, stated that “We are committed to providing our clients with the most innovative, convenient and secure solutions to pay how they want, when they want — HCE is a critical step.” She also added that through the use of HCE, the smartphone based payments by way of the RBC Secure Cloud become “even easier to use”.

The bank first started developing its mobile payments app back in 2009, and it has gone through a number of different evolutions and additions. This addition of HCE is only the latest move by the bank, which is among the players that are attempting to act the most quickly in order to grab hold of the largest proportion of the Canadian smartphone transaction market.