Trustonic, a mobile security company, partnered with the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute (KFTC) to simplify and improve authentication of mobile financial services in the country.

In a statement, Trustonic, which is backed by SoftBank-owned Arm, said it worked with software company Mirae Technology to assist KTFC in developing a secure digital one-time password (OTP) service.

KFTC’s OTP service has been integrated by KDB Bank, and is also available to end users of other financial institutions in South Korea including lenders, traders and insurance companies. It is accessible to 20 million people in total.

The system uses Trustonic’s APIs to ensure the OTP generator is secured in the hardware of the device, “thus making the user experience similar, faster and richer”, the company said. The system also offers increased security levels compared with software-protected second factor autenthication, it added.

Trustonic CEO Ben Cade highlighted people are often unable to complete a transaction because they lack authentication tokens.

“This was an acceptable scenario a few years ago, but not any longer,” he said, adding: “With our technology now embedded in more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide, services like this can simplify and enrich the user experience while also increasing both security and speed.”

For the last five years, Trustonic worked with handset manufacturers to embed the Trustonic Secured Platform (TSP) into billions of devices.