Is there a '.bank' domain name in your future?

• Author: Johnson, Doug

Last June, after three years of discussions, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, announced its intention to open up an application window for new Internet domains starting January of 2012. ICANN expects somewhere between 500 and 1,000 such applications.

ABA fully expects applications for financial domains such as ".bank" will be filed. We are aware of at least five separate initiatives to potentially apply for the domain. It is vitally important that a ".bank" domain not fall into the hands of those that would operate it insecurely or charge banks exorbitant registration fees to protect their intellectual property.

To protect banking interests, over the last three years ABA has worked with the Financial Services Roundtable to stop or slow the process as it relates to financial domains. Our advocacy has resulted in ICANN acknowledging that financial domains should have higher levels of security than domains generally. Government agencies, including our FFIEC agencies, also now have a more effective avenue to express their concerns about financial domain applications.

To guide ABA actions and advocacy on this critical issue, former Chairman Stephen P. Wilson also established a Chairman's Dot-Bank Task Force, composed of bankers from both small and large institutions. We are playing "defense" based on task force and member perceptions of little immediate demand for a ".bank site." At the same time, a recent member survey indicated two-thirds of the bankers responding would revamp their marketing efforts to include a ".bank" address.

In addition, at the recommendation of the task force, the ABA board also recently approved the establishment of an ABA subsidiary for-profit corporation within the Corporation for American...