Softbank taps up Nok Nok Labs for biometric authentication for mobile users

Nok Nok Labs has been picked by Japanese bank SoftBank to develop biometric authentication for their mobile customers.

The RegTech company has designed a number of Fast IDentity Online authentication standards,and will deploy its authentication suite to SoftBank’s mobile user-base of ten million.

Customers of the bank will now be able to access the mobile app through biometrics, giving them simpler and quicker access to their data – the new service is available on Android and iOS devices.

Softbank picked Nok Nok in order to offer its customers with a secure phishing-resistant, privacy-conscious authentication solution.

With this integration with Softbank, Nok Nok is now deployed to a majority of mobile users with biometric authentication on mobile devices in Japan, the company claims.

California-based Nok Nok develops a range of multi-factor authentication solutions for the financial services, mobile networks, and IoT companies.

The company offers a selection of biometric authentication solutions including fingerprint, iris and face scanning for mobile devices. These methods, which can be integrated with businesses via APIs, enable consumers to do away with their passwords.

Nok Nok Labs CEO Phillip Dunkelberger said, “In a market such as Japan where customers store and access most of their personal and professional data on mobile devices, authentication needs to be the first line of defense in protecting privacy, and preventing fraud and phishing,”

“We can no longer rely on passwords for our financial or other sensitive transactions as they are weak, forgotten and easily hacked. We are very pleased with SoftBank’s decision to choose our standards-based authentication platform for their millions of customers.”

Late last year, Softbank invested into the Israeli cybersecurity venture incubator Team8,which raised $85m to support the launch of its second fund.