Security of OTP tokens and smartphones to access online banking in Italy 2019

Italian respondents trust OTP tokens more than smartphones when it comes to online banking security. According to the results of a survey conducted by YouGov Italia in 2019, 89 percent of the respondents said that they think OTP tokens are secure, compared to 59 percent when asked the same question about smartphones.

OTP tokens vs smartphones

The survey was conducted in the context of the introduction of the new EU directive on online banking (PSD2), according to which smartphones substitute OTP tokens to access online banking service. According to the results, approximately four in ten Italians were not even aware of the introduction of this new security measure. However, one in two respondents were in favor of this change. Among the reasons for preferring smartphones over OTP tokens to access online banking were the fact that most people have their smartphones always at hand and this would allow them to carry out transactions everywhere and at any time.

Why so reluctant?

The reason why Italians were not aware of the introduction of this new security measure, and also not very happy about it, might probably be that not many of them are used to access their banking accounts online. In fact, despite growing in the last few years, the online banking penetration in Italy is just 36 percent, a figure that reaches 48 percent if considering only individuals that accessed the Internet in the previous three months.