> are Americans still logging into online banking with a username and password?
For financial institutions identity verification of existing and new customers is a way more complex topic than most people realize. Fraud is an issue but so it’s friction. If it’s too hard to login or to open a new account, people will use/move to a different service. So in the US institutions use “invisible tools” to authenticate users and minimize the risks. Third party services collect huge amounts of user data which is then used to verify customers’ identities in a probabilistic way. (For instance the odds that a fraudster is logging in into your bank account from your phone and from an IP that you have used numerous times in the past are very low)
So while the impression is that only a username and a pw are used, that’s not the case.
So in short: security is not the only goal of the financial services available to the masses. The goal is finding a balance between security and friction.
For financial institutions identity verification of existing and new customers is a way more complex topic than most people realize. Fraud is an issue but so it’s friction. If it’s too hard to login or to open a new account, people will use/move to a different service. So in the US institutions use “invisible tools” to authenticate users and minimize the risks. Third party services collect huge amounts of user data which is then used to verify customers’ identities in a probabilistic way. (For instance the odds that a fraudster is logging in into your bank account from your phone and from an IP that you have used numerous times in the past are very low) So while the impression is that only a username and a pw are used, that’s not the case.
So in short: security is not the only goal of the financial services available to the masses. The goal is finding a balance between security and friction.