CREALOGIX will deploy an authentication solution based on Entersekt’s Transakt. The technology creates an end-to-end, out-of-band channel between the users’ mobile device and the financial institution’s back-end systems to enable transmission of digital signature certificates and other communication between FIs and their customers.
Speaking to the concerns over the authentication challenges with mobile payments, CREALOGIX CEO Thomas Avedik emphasized how important it is for banks to find “a method that is extremely safe, cost-efficient and that is also helping them to offer unrivalled customer experience.” He said Entersekt’s technology would play a role in helping build the “bank of the future.”
Entersekt CEO Schalk Nolte pointed to interest in his company’s technology from FIs in regions ranging from Africa to Europe. He called CREALOGIX, which is headquartered in Switzerland and has offices in Germany, the U.K., and Singapore, “a strong business partner that understands how strong two-factor authentication helps the industry to protect digital transactions.” Entersekt’s Transakt SDK enables FIs to integrate the company’s multifactor-authentication technology into their mobile apps. (FIs can use an off-the shelf Transaskt mobile app for faster rollout, if needed.) The technology generates a unique device ID, which provides a nonrepudiable record of customer responses, protects against “man in the middle” attacks with public key-pinning, and uses an encrypted channel to enable both out-of-band authentication, as well as to better defend against brute force and malware attacks.
CREALOGIX was founded in 1996 and is based in Zurich, Switzerland. The company demonstrated its digital banking/ API layer at FinovateEurope 2016, shortly after announcing a new digital banking partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise. CREALOGIX raised $25.4 million in new funding last fall (CHF 25 million) in a convertible bond offering, the largest fintech fundraising in Switzerland in 2015.
Interviewed in April by CNBC Africa, and featured this June in Disrupt Africa, Entersekt presented its technology at the inaugural FinDEVr developers conference in San Francisco in 2014. The South Africa-based company discussed “Securing Mobile Applications through Transport Layer Diversity” in a presentation from Entersekt CTO Christiaan Brand. Brand explained the problem of some of the more common authentication strategies, such as SMP one-time passwords, showing how multifactor, out-of-band authentication processes—such as Transakt—are superior. Among other FIs that have adopted the technology are FirstBank, which announced in February that it would deploy Entersekt’s Transakt multifactor-authentication technology, and Equity Bank, which reported in January that it had chosen both Transakt and Interakt to improve the security of its online banking, mobile banking, and payments products.