Capital One announced Monday (May 15) it launched a pilot program that it says will make it easier for online services to identify customers, by letting them access the same identity verification technologies it uses with its own clients.
According to a report, Capital One said the products are currently in the beta stage and will enable third-party websites and applications to authenticate the identity of users against identity information that Capital One has stored.
“We have been building digital identity products and technology for years in order to serve our tens of millions of customers,” Matthew Thompson, director of Digital Business Development at Capital One, said in a report. “What we’re doing that’s new and exciting is providing those same underlying digital identity capabilities as a service to partner websites and applications.”
The way the technology will work is this: say a Capital One customer is signing up for a new app that requires the user’s name, address and birthdate. The new digital identity APIs, which are available for developers, will enable the customers to enter his or her Capital One account credentials and be verified as a user.
Capital One said in the report the Digital Identity API program is the first time Capital One is making the tools available outside its own bank. The report noted Capital One see the Digital Identity API products being used for peer-to-peer marketplaces and for trust access for utility companies.
“Trusted identity information is not only critical to our business, it’s critical to the entire economy, and we think there’s a lot of good we can do by externalizing these trusted identity solutions into the broader market in order to enable the future of commerce,” Thompson said in the report. “It’s a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ approach to improving trust online.”
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