Erste Bank: video identify yourself!
New customers can prove their ID via video. Image source: IDnow
Austria’s Erste Bank und Sparkassen can now verify new customers’ IDs via video. The functionality has been developed with specialist provider IDnow and introduced just a few weeks following the approval by the country’s Financial Market Authority (FMA).
Using the IDnow Video-Ident solution, new customers can “identify themselves directly via video chat, thus saving themselves the time and effort involved in visiting a branch office for this purpose”, Erste Bank says.
This can be done via a desktop as well as tablets and smartphones. Austrian citizens can use passports, national ID cards and driver’s licences to verify their identity.
This new feature applies to current accounts and student accounts only, but the service will also become available for other products over the course of this year, the bank says.
“We are the first large Austrian bank to offer this innovative option,” states Thomas Schaufler, chief retail officer of Erste Bank.
In other countries such as Germany, the procedure has been already approved for quite some time, which enabled fintech companies to offer this easy identification process in Austria as well, he adds.
Opening an account now takes less than ten minutes, Erste Bank states. The service is available online, 8am–12pm every day.
How it works:
- Upload the photograph in a government-issued photo ID
- Data is automatically transferred from the ID to the relevant form
- Completion of personal data
- Selection of preferred bank branch on a city map via geolocation feature
- Identification via video chat using the IDnow Video-Ident solution
