eBay joins FIDO Alliance

eBay has announced its membership in the FIDO Alliance and its FIDO Certified open source authentication server based on the FIDO UAF protocol.The online commerce firm is the first eCommerce company to directly achieve FIDO certification, and the first to open source a FIDO UAF authentication server.According to the FIDO Alliance, eBay is extending the multifactor authentication dialogue by making contributions from its eCommerce platform perspective. Through its membership in the FIDO Alliance and open sourcing its FIDO UAF Server and Android client, eBay is championing the effort for open authentication standards in commerce. The company hopes to further the adoption of this technology and welcomes contributors from across the Alliance to help build the community."eBay is constantly looking for innovative ways to stimulate seamless end-to-end experiences for users across platforms. We believe that biometrics, such as fingerprint technologies, form the bedrock for future authentication methods," says Rajeev Angal, director, Trust and Identity Engineering at eBay. "eBay recognises that there needs to be collaboration across different players such as hardware, software and commerce in order to establish a set of industry standards for authentication. The FIDO Alliance standards are the foundation for this cross-industry collaboration and interoperability for both service providers like us and the consumer electronics companies providing personal digital devices.""By joining the Alliance and launching its open source implementations, eBay is showing clear innovation leadership as it positions web and mobile commerce globally for broad-scale deployment of industry standard FIDO authentication," says Brett McDowell, executive director of the FIDO Alliance.The Alliance says: "There is a growing expectation that users should be able to easily access online commerce sites from multiple and varying devices. As a result, companies need to ensure that authentication methods remain secure, private and frictionless in order to effectively mitigate potential risks for users. The FIDO Alliance is leading the path for this stronger, simpler multifactor authentication with open standards that promote interoperability of next-generation authentication technologies such as on-device biometrics. eBay is advancing next-generation device authentication for commerce platforms and accelerating the development of industry­wide authentication standards for the benefit of its users."

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