What is Strong Customer Authentication?
You may or may not have heard about Strong Customer Authentication (SCA for short). Either way, what’s important to know is, it will change the way you access your bank accounts, make payments and how you purchase things online. SCA originates from the EU’s second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) which came into force in January 2018. One of the central themes of the directive was to make all things payment related safer and more secure. Though PSD2 has been around for a while now, SCA will only become effective from the 14th September 2019. The reason for this delay is that PSD2 didn’t actually specify how SCA should be implemented. The Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) define how the requirements of PSD2 should be met, thereby delivering enhanced consumer protection and improving the security of payment services across the European Union.
At fire.com, we have always focused on security and customers have been using two factor authentication for years. Accordingly the requirements of SCA are closely aligned with how our system operates today. We will issue more customer communications over the coming months explaining the changes and our dedicated SCA page will have all the info you need.
Nothing is changing for now but you should ensure you have the latest fire.com business or personal app, this will be the central all SCA requests. As always we’re here to help if you have any questions or queries (support@fire.com).
SCA is coming and together, we’re ready for it!
Shane O’Brien, COO fire.com
