Wells Fargo will contribute to FIDO Alliance's ongoing goal of achieving industry standards for strong authentication that is a more secure, private and easier-to-use alternative to passwords.

"Providing customers with choice, enhancing customer experience and ensuring the security of account information are at the foundation of our customer relationships," said Christopher Clausen, SVP and manager of the fraud prevention and authentication products group for the Wells Fargo virtual channels division. "As we continue to deploy new technologies that help customers succeed financially, our partnership with the FIDO Alliance helps us continue to deliver on these top priorities."

FIDO Alliance members share technology and collaborate to deliver open specifications for universal strong authentication that enables FIDO-compliant authentication methods to be interoperable, more secure and private, and easier-to-use.

The organization's specifications will support a wide range of authentication technologies, including various biometrics such as fingerprint, eye and iris scanners, voice and facial recognition.

They will also further enable existing solutions and communications standards, such as trusted platform modules, USB security tokens, embedded secure elements, smart cards, bluetooth low energy, and near field communication.
The open specifications are being designed to be extensible, accommodate future innovation, protect current investments, and allow technologies to interact within an interoperable infrastructure to enable authentication choice.

FIDO Alliance has recently welcomed secure communication and identity management solutions provider Giesecke & Devrient as a member, and NXT-ID, a biometric authentication company specializing in mobile commerce, as a Sponsor member.