Strong Customer Authentication Solutions

For most companies, strong authentication is not just a compliance exercise but can also be targeted to be a driver for better innovative results. Authentication is a procedure of proving who you are and confirming your intention to perform any action like allowing access to account information, making payment transactions, and more, but all electronically. Stronger customer authentication or SCA is one regulatory requirement based on the usage of either two or more major elements. Those are possession, knowledge, and inherence.

Why is it gaining popularity among the masses?

While the PSD2 or the Payment Services Directive 2 came right into force from January 2018 and needed SCA, SCA was enforced from 1st January 2021. Before proceeding further with SCA, it is better to get a quick hold of what PSD2 actually stands for.

  • PSD2 was mainly created to help stimulate participation, competition, and innovation from non-banks in electronic payment services.
  • It was used to increase the level of consumer protection to a new extent. For that, it made payments more secure and a lot safer.
  • PSD2 will need the banks to open up APIs to third parties like Fintechs for performing account-to-account transactions.
  • It even helps the banks to access account-centric information like transactional history and more.
  • SCA, when applied to any electronic-based payment methods, will work with a minimum or one leg in EEA or EU. It can either be account transactions or will be payment card transactions.
  • It is not that hard to state that PSD2 completely relies on SCA. It is one way to protect the consumers and also allow trustworthy third parties to access the current bank accounts.

What all are included in the field of SCA:

SCA will mainly need two-factor authentication alongside dynamic linking. It ensures that the consumer remains completely informed and will make one active decision to help authorize a payment transaction. 

  • In simple terms, for processing payments under the new rule successfully, banks need to ask customers for the two-authentication factors.
  • They have to focus on the PIN or password as entered on mobiles to help constitute two major factors, which are possession and knowledge.
  • Even with all the opportunities that come along with PSD2, the SCA adoption has been pretty slower than what the European authorities might have gone for. 
  • It is because that implementing SCA will need a well-crafted user experience to help minimize friction levels. It should help in striking an awesome balance between UX and SCA, and that has been quite a challenge for multiple firms.

There have been some exceptions where SCA was not indeed a necessity, mainly for regular subscriptions and transactions, which will value less than 30 Euros. But now, SCA has turned from a perceived issue to a great business opportunity.

The current status of SCA:

Some companies have run polls to understand the current status of strong customer authentication solutions and the plans these days. Some of the interesting takeaways will help you understand what SCA stands for in the current business-centric marketplace.

  • Even with the fact that the deadline is looming, not all are ready for the changes.
  • The major choice for SCA is the present electronic IDs like Bank ID.
  • The main motivation to deploy the SCA remains fraud. It will reflect the importance of challenges that industries face these days.

Fundamental benefits to follow:

From the current standpoint, it can easily be stated that SCA presents some fundamental business benefits. If you own the right mindset, you can strengthen your business norms by using SCA in the best limelight possible.

Proper innovation and thorough customer acquisition:

With the help of a simplistic SCA procedure, it is easily possible to take a customer from mere interest to settling a payment within a few minutes. With proper use of SCA, using some of the new services gets a lot better, like self-service management of the geographical limits, top-up and pre-paid credit cards, and more.

All these possible services, as mentioned above, will need SCA to be proficiently set up and used. With poor SCA, the use of innovative and new services will get a lot harder than usual. So, crafting the best SCA-based plan is the need of the hour.

Increasing the level of security for consumers:

For consumers, SCA is a lock with a secure key for protecting money. Getting a lock with easy to use and secure key will help you in establishing trust with consumers. The secured and easiest key will be highly used. So, proper implementation of SCA from your side will offer the chance to become that top-notch card to use.

Make sure to catch up with the firms dealing with SCA for better learning. Understand the benefits it holds before using the same for growing the current level or position of your firm.