It says something about the state of the market today that companies are now having to collaborate in order to develop new ideas and technologies that solve the security issues raised by mobile wallets.

As most current mobile wallets won’t meet the new security standards for online payments that have been proposed within the new European guidelines, companies working within the security industry have got together to create their own mobile wallet solution, theMIDAS Alliance (www.midasalliance.org). MIDAS stands for Mobile Identity Authentication Standard, and the alliance’s primary aim is to promote information security and authentication innovation through industry-wide collaboration.

Three of its earliest founders include Experian, Facebanx and FICO.

One of the organisation’s founding members is Brian Kinch, a senior director of FICO, a global leader in anti-fraud software. “I believe this kind of information sharing is critical,” Kinch said  “to prevent security breaches, we need to bridge the gap between what the regulators are seeking and what the financial services industry is doing.”

Fellow alliance member Jonathan Williams, a director of Experian, agreed, “It is very important to create innovative solutions that improve consumers’ protection from fraud and are cost-effective enough to be able to be rolled out across the industry,” Williams said.  

As one of the key security challenges of mobile wallets is account log in, Facebanx, a global leader in biometrics, were invited to become a founder member in order to explain the complex issues around biometric log in. Matthew Silverstone, the CEO of Facebanx, said “providing a solution for mobile wallets that lets the customer choose from one or more of the following biometrics — face, voice, eye and fingerprint — is an idea that is going to be discussed within MIDAS. Providing the customer with a multi factor biometric authentication seems like a sensible solution.”