Crave goes Diving with Dolphins: UK start-ups fly the flag for tech innovation

Remember the first time you logged into online banking? Life-changing, wasn't it? No more wasting your lunch break queuing for one of two open windows in your local HSBarcWest, no more holding for 90 minutes then repeating your 14-digit card number to three different call-centre monkeys, and no more traipsing to the cashpoint to find out whether that cheque from ClaimsDirect has cleared so you can buy yourself a new footspa. Brilliant.

Then chip-and-PIN card readers came along and ruined everything. Fortunately, Cronto visual transaction signing is a new security solution that sees online banking go together with your mobile phone like Howard from the Halifax goes with the desire to put your foot through your TV.

Each time you perform a transaction online, like paying a bill or setting up a standing order, the Cronto system generates a unique cryptogram. Scan this with an app on your phone and the sofware verifies you are who you say you are.

Cronto isn't in place with any UK banks just yet. Commerzbank, the second largest bank in Germany, has adopted the system, which is compatible with iPhone, Java, Android, Symbian and other mobile platforms. The app is an over-the-air download. The bank posts you a unique barcode, which you scan with your phone, and your handset is then registered to you.

The system replaces those intensely annoying and inherently flawed card readers that so many online banking systems now require. Think they're there to protect your money? Nope -- they're there to shift the blame to you should someone nick your money. As well as being insanely fiddly, card readers are flawed because they use the same PIN you use in public, in such potentially unsavoury locations as hacked cash machines, strip clubs and high-street coffee chains.

Cronto, by contrast, doesn't require any input from a user. The process is automated between the barcode generated by the Web site and the software in the phone. It's also more portable as you're more likely to carry your phone around than a stupid little card reader.

Of course, someone could pinch your phone, but that's what SIM lock and passcodes are for, right? Right, do excuse us -- we're off to see if that cheque from the medical trial has cleared, and possibly ask someone if our urine is supposed to be that colour.