Six of the UK’s largest banks and building societies have joined an industry-led initiative to build a digital verification service that would let customers confirm their identity through their banking app, in a move by the financial sector to establish its own role in digital identity. Coordinated by the industry body UK Finance and unveiled on 25 June 2026 at its Digital Innovation Summit, the project has the backing of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide Building Society, NatWest Group and Santander.
The service is designed to solve a familiar friction in online transactions. Many digital processes still require customers to prove who they are repeatedly, often by handing over multiple documents to confirm a single fact such as their name, age or address. The proposed service would replace that with a secure digital exchange built on the existing relationship between a bank and its customer: the relevant verified detail would be shared with a third party only to the extent a transaction requires, with the customer approving each request through their banking app. The arrangement would be voluntary and based on explicit consent, with customers retaining control over what data is shared and when.
The banks are drawing on a distinctive asset. Financial institutions already hold verified information about their customers, having carried out identity checks to meet know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering requirements, and the initiative seeks to put that trusted, pre-verified data to wider use. Jana Mackintosh, managing director of payments and innovation at UK Finance, framed the sector as well placed to deliver a secure and trusted verification service, arguing that using already-verified information shared only with customer consent could make digital transactions safer, quicker and more convenient while keeping individuals in control of their data. The technical design and delivery is being led by Select ID, whose chief executive Nick Mothershaw welcomed the initiative as a way to put bank-verified information to use in making digital verification more secure and convenient.
The project is deliberately positioned alongside, rather than against, the government’s own work. UK Finance has stressed that the bank-led service is separate from the government’s digital-identity programme, which has drawn public opposition, and is aligned instead with the UK’s digital verification services trust framework, targeting private-sector commercial and retail use rather than public-sector applications. By confining the service to commercial use cases and framing it as complementary, the sector is seeking to occupy a clearly defined space in digital verification while avoiding the controversy that has surrounded state-led identity schemes.
The commercial and security logic behind the initiative is substantial. UK Finance’s latest annual fraud figures show criminals stole £1.28 billion through payment fraud in 2025, a 4% increase, underlining the pressure on the sector to make digital transactions more secure, and a trusted bank-verified credential could reduce the friction and fraud risk that come with repeated document-sharing. A widely adopted verification service could also create a valuable position for the banks in the digital economy, embedding them in the transactions of retailers, platforms and other businesses that need to confirm customer details, and UK Finance has invited interested organisations to take part in future pilot activity.
The initiative remains at an early stage, with a real-world pilot the next test of whether it works in practice. The project has completed proof-of-concept work using synthetic data to examine the technical, legal and operational requirements, and a live pilot in a controlled environment is scheduled for the coming months. Whether the service achieves wide adoption will depend on that pilot, on how many businesses choose to accept bank-verified credentials, and on whether customers trust the banks to handle the exchange — but the backing of six of the country’s largest lenders gives the financial sector a credible claim to a central role in how digital identity develops in the UK.
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