This could be the beginning of the end for all those mind-numbing online account registrations.
Germany's corporate giants are promising a brave new future in the form of a single account -- one that will let you do your online shopping, get a flight and rent a car, all with no more registrations or repetitive passwords.
Deutsche Bank (DB), Germany's biggest bank, announced Monday it's teaming up with other big firms to create a new company that will create the service. Users would enter their ID details just once before they can make all their online purchases across multiple sites.
The partners -- which include Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler (DDAIF), insurer Allianz (ALIZF) and publisher Axel Springer -- hope other firms will sign up to their vision. They're calling it a "pan-industry platform for online registration, e-identity and data services."
The program could eventually be expanded to include government services. For example, drivers could apply for a new license through the system before their old one expires.
The partners expect the program will be running in Germany by mid-2018, and they stressed it will be "secure" and comply with all European Union data protection rules.
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Other companies have tried to tackle this issue in the past by making it easier to open online accounts and make purchases -- but none have gone as far as this new proposal.
PayPal (PYPL) gives users a single secure account to make their online payments. The Facebook (FB) Connect service, which launched in 2008, lets Facebookers interact on other sites -- like leaving comments on a news story -- through their Facebook identities without creating brand-new accounts for every site. Apple (AAPL) has also tried to help users by automatically offering to fill in identification details when users sign up for new accounts on their personal computers.
Related: Facebook wants to kill the password
The German firms are promising a much broader, secure service.
"The time is ripe for a platform initiative of this kind. It will increase legal certainty for clients and boost the European digital economy's growth," Christian Sewing, the deputy CEO of Deutsche Bank, said in a press release.
Of course, this planned service could also be a top target for hackers who are keen to get their hands on peoples' credit card, address and passport details. The new company handling this data will need to implement a range of security systems to protect clients.
