Intelligent Environments, a British financial services technology firm has announced Emoji Passcode, a mobile application that can allow users to access their bank accounts by typing an emoji-based password.

The idea behind this ground-breaking innovation relies on the ability of humans to remember images better than words or numbers, and the proliferation of emojis in recent decades thanks to desktop and mobile-based instant messaging applications.

Emojis are much easier to remember than numbers

Dubbed Emoji Passcode, this technology relies on a person's ability to craft a story around a series of symbols and then to remember it later on, using a combination between words or events.

Put together with an interesting piece of statistic which states that a third of all British credit card users have forgotten their PIN at one point or another, Emoji Passcode has a good chance of achieving success amongst its early adopters.

The technology is currently implemented as an online banking mobile application, and Intelligent Environments is in talks with different banks for rolling Emoji Passcode to users in the next year.

The company has big leverage in the British banking sector, being a well-known innovator, the first company in the world to create a banking app for smartwatches, and also the first one to bring an online credit card solution and an online wallet application to the UK.

Emoji Passcode has mathematically-sound principles behind it

Security-wise, Emoji Passcode is also much better at protecting your banking accounts when compared to classic PIN solutions.

While PINs rely on a 4-digit code that can be made up of only 10 characters, Emoji Passcode uses a similar 4-digit 4-emoji code, only it offers users the ability to choose from 44 emojis.

This creates 480 times more options when choosing a password, increasing the security level of your password many times over classic PINs.

Update: It was brought to our attention by Hitoshi Kokumai, President of Mnemonic Security, Inc., that such image-based password systems are not really new, and similar solutions have existed for quite some time.