We believe a sea change is taking place today and the banking industry is in a position to recapture intermediary roles that they lost only decades ago. In the short term, we envision banks becoming Certificate Authorities and issuing certificates to their customers. Banks may also choose to be Registration Authorities and vouch for their customers' identity to another CA, such as ABAecom. These certificates will follow standardized rules and policies and ultimately work in a variety of applications. Banks benefit through retention of existing customers as well as by creating additional traffic from new customers who are coming to the bank for certificates.
Banks also benefit from the ability to leverage a trusted on-line infrastructure.
This allows development of new bank services and applications as well as providing a new channel into your bank that may not exist today. The technology also presents tremendous business reengineering possibilities. There are obvious cost reductions and efficiencies made possible by moving business processes from a paper world to a trusted electronic environment. Digital certificates enable all these opportunities. We, as an industry, must take the necessary steps to turn these possibilities into reality.