Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander are building a service to let customers verify their identity via their banking app
UK Finance is supporting six of the UK’s largest banks to develop a service that would let customers verify their identity through their banking app, drawing on the records lenders already hold rather than the passports and utility bills online checks usually demand.
Unveiled today (25 June) at the UK Finance Digital Innovation Summit 2026, the digital ID project has the backing of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide Building Society, NatWest Group and Santander.
It marks a move by the sector to own a slice of digital verification at a point when the government is pressing ahead with its own, separate digital identity programme – work UK Finance frames as complementary rather than competing.
The service would confirm a single detail, such as a customer’s name, age or address, and share only what a transaction requires.
Online processes often ask customers to prove who they are several times over, handing across paperwork simply to confirm one fact, and the proposed service would replace that with a secure digital exchange built on the existing relationship between a bank and its customer.
UK Finance: How the digital verification service works
A customer would approve each request through their banking app, with the relevant details passed securely to a third party so they can complete a purchase, open an account or access a service.
Participation would be voluntary and rest on explicit consent, leaving customers to decide what information is shared and at what point.
UK Finance points to online shopping, age and identity checks on digital platforms, property transactions and account openings as early candidates for the service. In each case, the customer would verify a detail without producing a passport or a recent utility bill.
The trade body has set out four outcomes it wants the service to deliver:
- Control and privacy for customers over what they share;
- A reduction in fraud, with bank-verified credentials making scams, fake accounts and synthetic identities harder to pull off;
- And quicker verification without repeated document checks; and lower costs and friction for businesses confirming who their customers are.
Synthetic identities and fake accounts are a persistent problem for organisations onboarding customers online, and a credential drawn from a bank’s own records is harder to fabricate than a scanned document. UK Finance says the service is a way to cut the risk while stripping friction from checks businesses already run.
From proof of concept to live pilot
The project has finished its proof-of-concept stage, using synthetic data to map the technical, legal and operational demands of running such a service, and a live pilot in a controlled real-world setting is scheduled for the coming months.
UK Finance and the participating firms are working with Select ID, which is leading the technical design and delivery. Nick Mothershaw, the firm’s CEO, said it was pleased to support an industry effort exploring how bank-verified information can make digital verification more secure and convenient.
Jana Mackintosh, Managing Director of Payments and Innovation at UK Finance, said: “Using already verified information, shared only with the customer’s explicit consent, could help make digital transactions safer, quicker and more convenient as well as ensuring customers have full control over how their data is used.”
UK Finance is inviting expressions of interest from organisations wanting a role in future pilot activity, naming retailers, digital platforms, other firms across the digital verification ecosystem and any business looking to streamline how it checks customers online.
The service sits within the UK’s digital verification services trust framework and targets private sector commercial and retail use, rather than public sector cases, keeping it distinct from the government’s parallel work on digital identity.
