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0 pointsmiki1232111y ago0 comments

> Do you mean you expect me to give my banking site/app credentials to X?

No no. Over here (Poland), the way this works is that you get a big list of banks, you click on one, get redirected to their site, log in there, complete any 2FA they need you to complete, are given the typical oAuth "this application wants to access this sort of data" consent screen, and then are redirected back if you consent.

This is mostly used for fast online bank transfers, which we often use for online payments instead of credit cards, but there's also a system to use this for ID verification.

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thephyber1y ago

Oh. In Single-Sign On / OAuth terminology, the bank’s website is the Identity Provider (IdP).

Banks in the US depend on government-issued ID and information contracted from credit bureaus (3 big companies that are effectively data brokers about consumer lending behavior). We have federated identity, but in a weird, ineffective way.

Every once in a while, someone bold makes a political proposal to make our authentication / identity proof systems simpler, but then people realize the privacy implications (and religious fundamentalists point to the “mark of the beast” part of the Bible) and then the proposal doesn’t go anywhere.

miki123211OP1y ago

The interesting part about this is that such a system wouldn't necessarily need to come from the government. There are companies that need verification and want to do it cheaply and with little friction, and there are banks and carriers who could make some extra money on it.

Aloisius1y ago

There are thousands of banks in the US. Getting them to agree on anything is beyond difficult.

Carriers in the US don't all require ID, so they're not particularly useful for identity verification.

rchaud1y ago

Same system is used in Canada to authenticate indviduals who are logging into the government tax portal, or submitting their tax returns electronically through a tax preparation software.

baobabKoodaa1y ago

Same thing is very common here in Finland.

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