An eBay First: FIDO’s eCom Certification

EBay is opening up, as it were, to the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance — marking a first for any eCommerce company.

The online marketplace announced yesterday (March 29) that it has directly achieved FIDO certification, as well as open-sourced a FIDO UAF authentication server and Android client, thus gaining membership in both. This is notable, shares a press release, in that eBay is the first company to contribute to the multi-factor authentication dialogue (via FIDO) and the effort for open authentication standards in commerce from the perspective of an eCommerce platform.

“EBay is constantly looking for innovative ways to stimulate seamless end-to-end experiences for users across platforms. We believe that biometrics, such as fingerprint technologies, form the bedrock for future authentication methods,” stated Rajeev Angal, director of trust and identity engineering at eBay, in the release. “EBay recognizes that there needs to be collaboration across different players, like hardware, software and commerce, in order to establish a set of industry standards for authentication. The FIDO Alliance standards are the foundation for this cross-industry collaboration and interoperability for both service providers like us and the consumer electronics companies providing personal digital devices.”

“By joining the alliance and launching its open-source implementations, eBay is showing clear innovation leadership as it positions Web and mobile commerce globally for broad-scale deployment of industry standard FIDO authentication,” commented Brett McDowell, executive director of the FIDO Alliance, in the press release.

The FIDO Alliance, the release goes on to state, is dedicated to establishing stronger, simpler multi-factor authentication methods with open standards that promote interoperability of next-generation authentication devices, all towards the goal of ensuring secure, private and frictionless access to online commerce sites by consumers using any device of their choosing. As part of the alliance, eBay, the release adds, is now contributing to the advancement of next-generation device authentication for commerce platforms and accelerating the development of industry-­wide authentication standards for the benefit of its users.