Norwegian telco Telenor is teaming up with the national BankID consortium to develop a mobile banking authentication service.
Norway's BankID partnership was set up by the Norwegian Financial Services Association (FNH) and the Norwegian Savings Banks Association along with other banks in the country to establish a national electronic public key infrastructure (PKI) for the banking and finance industry.
Telenor says it will now work with the BankID consortium to develop an e-signature authentication system for use with mobile handsets.
The mobile authentication service will initially be deployed in four application areas: logging on to Internet banks; mobile banking; electronic service for business and the public sector; and account-based payment services for the Internet and mobiles (BankAxess).
The service will be made available in 2008, says Telenor, and all banks participating in the BankID Partnership will be able to offer the system to their online banking customers.
Arne Skauge, managing director, FNH, states: "BankID for mobile phones can help meet people's expectation of being able to satisfy their banking needs anytime and anywhere. Having to stand in line to pay bills is ancient history."