Nationwide Building Society has contracted with French vendor Xiring for the provision of over one million handheld authentication devices which it will begin rolling out to its online retail banking customers this spring.
Xiring says it has supplied Nationwide with over one million of its pocket-size portable Xi-Sign 4000 Apacs readers.
Nationwide customers will use the readers to access We banking accounts. The user inserts their Visa debit card into the card reader and enters a four-digit PIN. Following verification of the PIN, the reader displays an eight digit one-time-password that is valid for a single transaction and is used as the final stage of authentication when accessing accounts via the Internet.
In addition to supplying the readers Xiring says it will provide other "deployment services" to Nationwide retail customers.
Commenting on the initiative, Jeremy Wode, Nationwide's divisional director for consumer finance, says: "Nationwide is committed to providing safe and secure ways for our customers to carry out Internet Banking. The introduction of personal card readers will create an additional layer of security for our Internet banking customers."
Xiring said last May that The Royal Bank of Scotland would roll out its Xi-Sign 4000 for Apacs devices to online retail banking customers.
Earlier in the year UK high street bank Barclays said it was issuing handheld chip and PIN readers provided by Gemalto to half a million customers who use online banking to transfer funds to new third party accounts.
However, the implementation of the technology has angered some customers who resent the requirement to carry the bulky card-readers while on the road, as discussed in the following Finextra Community blog post: Barclays faces protests over clunky PINSentry authentication.