UBS takes a step towards a passwordless future

It looks like the end of the password may be coming a bit more quickly than I had expected… I received an email from UBS today touting their new login via QR code functionality, which seems to work pretty well. Here is a demo

The user experience is pretty simple – go to the login page, select the QR code login option and then open the UBS mobile app. (You have to have previously logged in to the app with your credentials and enabled biometric authentication.). Authenticate biometrically on the app, and then click the little QR code button and scan the code on your computer screen. Done.

The user experience is quite good, although I would have made the button for the QR code scanner in the mobile app a bit bigger/more prominent. No need to enter a user name or password and the design seems to be phish resistant, since it requires you to have your phone and the displayed QR code expires after a couple of minutes. I wonder what is going on behind the scenes, whether it is implemented using the FIDO2 standard – going to try and find out more here…

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