A new cross-industry alliance has been formed to help stakeholders to meet impending security standards for mobile wallets in the European market. The new organization is called the Mobile Identity Authentication Standard Alliance, or the MIDAS Alliance.
The organization seeks to help organizations meet the SecuRe Pay guidelines being implemented by the European Central Bank (ECB) this August. In a statement announcing its launch, the MIDAS Alliance asserted that “most current mobile wallets will not meet the security standards for online and in-store payments across Europe.”
The Alliance’s inaugural members are information services provider Experian, software company FICO, and Facebanx, a biometrics developer that has recently enhanced its technological portfolio. Speaking in the same statement, Facebanx CEO Matthew Silverstone expressed his company’s interest in being the MIDAS Alliance’s resident biometrics expert, saying he “was delighted to be invited as one of the founders of MIDAS and explain the complex issues around biometrics, particularly as it is a fundamental requirement of SecuRe Pay.”
In a world of increasingly complex mobile technologies, these kinds of cross-industry alliances are becoming more popular means for companies – even those who are otherwise rivals – to collaborate on establishing and meeting useful standards that will benefit the whole industry. Other such organizations include the FIDO Alliance, which seeks authentication standards that are particularly pertinent to the mobile industry, and the AllSeen Alliance, which specializes in the Internet of Things.
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