Capital One, among the largest banks in the United States, is working on the use of blockchain solutions to create more convenient and safer methods of user authentication such as, for example, in bank security systems.
According to the patent application, published on Thursday and filed in the Patent and Trademark Office in June 2017 (USPTO), Capital One blockchain creates a system that allows to receive, store and retrieve encrypted authentication user data. According to developers, institutions and customers "may benefit from a collaborative authentication system that handles authentication interactions for multiple institutions." One of the possible applications of this technology in business, according to the authors of the patent, can be the satisfaction of "regulatory guidelines for identifying customers, such as "Know Your Customer" guidelines" that must be observed by most financial institutions of the world in order to reduce the risk of money laundering.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
- The method allows you to retrieve the user's identity when it starts the authentication process (provided that the user has a corresponding profile). The system then authenticates or denies the user based on the information received, but the user data itself is securely stored in the blockchain.
- Such innovation is said to help institutions reduce "time and resources" at the beginning of working with new clients. Moreover, as the patent application says, this system can be useful to users who, passing from one institution to another, can "be outraged" by the need for re-authentication.