With emoji now the fastest growing language in the UK, ieDigital today launched the world’s first emoji-only passcode, which is easier to remember and mathematically more secure than traditional passcodes.

Emoji Passcode enables consumers to log in to their banks using four emoji characters instead of traditional pin numbers or passwords. The characters are selected from a bank of 44.

Emoji Passcode has been integrated into ieDigital’s Android digital banking app, and you can see a demonstration below.

Mathematically more secure

Emoji Passcode is mathematically more secure than traditional methods. There are 480 times more permutations using emojis over traditional four-digit passcodes¹. In addition, it will prevent hackers from identifying common and easily obtainable numerical passcodes, such as a date of birth or a wedding anniversary.

Easier to remember

This new emoji security technology is also easier to remember, as research² shows humans remember pictures better than words. Memory expert Tony Buzan, and inventor of the Mind Map technique, said: “The Emoji Passcode plays to humans’ extraordinary ability to remember pictures, which is anchored in our evolutionary history. We remember more information when it’s in pictorial form. That’s why the Emoji Passcode is better than traditional pins.”

A third of Brits have forgotten pin numbers before

ieDigital launched the feature in response to new research that shows Brits find it hard to remember numerical passcodes. According to a survey³ with over 1,300 respondents in the UK, nearly a third have forgotten their pins before, while one in four said they use the same pin for all their cards.

ieDigital is currently in discussion with banks that are considering rolling the technology out to their customers within the next 12 months.

“We had input from lots of millennials while developing the technology,” said David Webber, ieDigital. “What’s clear is that the younger generation is communicating in new ways. Our research shows 64% of millennials regularly communicate using only emoji, so we decided to reinvent the passcode for a new generation by developing the world’s first emoji security technology.”

It’s one of several groundbreaking innovations the financial services technology firm has developed. In November 2013, ieDigital launched the world’s first smartwatch banking app. It was also responsible for the first online credit card solution and first online wallet in the UK.

Press contacts

Maxine Glencross

ieDigital

MGlencross@iedigital.com

020 8614 9800

Footnotes

¹ For scientific research on humans better remembering pictures than words see Cheryl L. Grady, Anthony R. Mcintosh, M. Natasha Rajah, Fergus I. M. Craik, “Neural correlates of the episodic encoding of pictures and words”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 95, pp. 2703–2708, March 1998, https://www.pnas.org/content/95/5/2703.full.pdf

² Traditional PIN = 7,290 unique permutations of four non-repeating numbers vs Emoji Passcode = 3,498,308 million unique permutations of non-repeating emojis, based on a selection size of 44 emoji.

³ The research for Intelligent Environments was carried out by Opinion Matters between 20 May 2015 and 22 May 2015. Sample: 1,337 UK adults aged 18+