ANZ joins NAB and CBA on ConnectID

ANZ Plus customers will be able to reuse their banking identity with certain merchants and businesses via the ConnectID service.

ConnectID's operator Australian Payments Plus (AP+) said in a statement that ANZ is the third of the 'big four' banks to join the digital identity exchange, following CBA and NAB.

The purpose of ConnectID is to act as an intermediary between a holder of customer identity credentials, and a different organisation seeking to verify that customer's identity.

Rather than the customer hand over identity documents to every new organisation they interact with, the idea of ConnectID is that the customer can reuse an existing identity - such as with their bank - over and over.

For businesses and other organisations, such a service can also mean they do not have to collect and store identity documents; such personal identity stores have been targeted by threat actors over the past few years.

“We’re pleased to help ANZ Plus customers keep control of their identity and minimise the sharing of data for services where this is not necessary,” ANZ General Manager of customer and identity services Gabriel Steele said in a statement.

“We are excited to provide ANZ Plus customers with the choice to use a secure, convenient method to verify their identity with a growing list of approved merchants."

ANZ Plus is a digital-native banking service offered by ANZ.

Steele said that ConnectID would both “better protect our [ANZ] customers” and also “reduce the risk our business customers face in holding more data than required.” 

Connect ID’s merchant participants include organisations such as reference-checking software provider Referoo and workforce compliance platform Credenxia.