.bank

Status:	Proposed
Country:	International
Type:	Niche
More information:

.bank is one of the proposed new generic top level domain names (gTLDs) intended for the use of companies engaged in providing financial services worldwide. The Domain Security Company formerly Asif LLC, a start-up company based in Wisconsin; and the joint project between American Bankers Association (ABA) & BITS, technology policy arm of the Financial Services Roundtable, are among the organizations competing to get the approval of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to operate the proposed TLD.

Domain Security Company Initiative

On August 31, 2010, Mary Iqbal, CEO of Domain Security Company filed an application (85, 120, 345) with the United States Patent Office (USPT) as the rightful owner of the .bank intended for domain name registration services. A similar patent application for .bank was also filed by the company in Pakistan. According to Iqbal, she had been working on the idea for several years and she is serious about her application with ICANN to become the registry operator of .bank TLD. On January 10 2012, the USPTO issued the patent no. 4, 085,335 for .bank to Asif LLC, the previous name of Domain Security Company. However on January 19, the USPTO cancelled the patent because of error. In a letter sent to the company’s lawyer, the USPTO explained that a protest letter filed against the trademark was not processed before entering it in the Supplemental Registration. Under Trademark Act 1, 2, 3 and 45...”TLD would not be perceived as trademark.” The trademark office cited it has “broad authority to correct mistakes.”

ABA and BITS .Bank Project

The .bank project of American Bankers Association (ABA) and BITS is headed by Craig Schwartz, former chief gTLD registry liaison of ICANN. He serves as general manager for registry programs of the project. According to Schwartz, ABA and BITS will establish a new company that will be responsible in filing the application for .bank gTLD. Their plan is to file a community-designated bid to avoid the ICANN auction in anticipation for any possible gTLD string contention from other applications. Schwartz explained, “We’ve looked at the scoring and while it may not come into play at all, we do believe we can meet the requisite score. But we’re certainly mindful of what’s happening in the space, there’s always the possibility of contention.” He added that their plan is to begin the operations of .bank as a business to business and it will be primarily used for secure inter-bank transactions and will partner with a several ICANN accredited registrars that would be able to meet the company’s security requirements.

On April 2011, ABA & BITS announced that they signed a contract with Verisign to serve as their exclusive provider of back-end registry services.

On December 2011, BITS submitted to ICANN 31 proposed requirements to ensure the stability and resiliency of “high security” gTLDs like .bank and .pay covering topics from registration, acceptable use policies, abusive conduct, law enforcement, compliance registrar relations and data security. BITS calls the proposed gTLDs intended for the use of the financial industry as “fTLDs.” In addition, the organization strongly urged the internet governing body to accept the standards proposed by the Security Standards Working Group (SSWG). Seventeen companies are endorsing BITS proposal.

The 2011 Proposed Security, Stability and Resiliency Requirements for Financial TLDs submitted by BITS to ICANN is available here

BITS & ABA have chosen Verisign to provide registry services for .bank, should they be approved to run it following the application process.

Different Reactions

Companies within the financial sector has varying reactions regarding the proposed .bank gTLD. Some believe that it will help curb incidence of domain name abuse. Avivah Litan, an analyst from Gartner said that a TLD dedicated for banks will provide more security because monitoring would be easier. Litan explained that under the .com TLD, anyone can register a domain name. On the other hand, Forrester Research marketing analyst Jeff Ernst said that several big banks are considering to apply for their own TLD registry while smaller banks are considering to use a .bank domain name.

Reaction from OSFI Canada

On November 13, 2009, the Office of the Superintendent of the Financial Institutions in Canada (OSFI) informed ICANN through a letter addressed to ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom about the possible problems that will be faced by entities applying for a .bank gTLD in connection with Canada's Bank Act. Under the provisions of the regulation, any person is prohibited to use the word bank to indicate or describe a financial service other than banks regulated by OSFI. In lieu, the OSFI explained that any entity in Canada found using a .bank gTLD in violation of Canada's Bank Act will be required to abandon the domain name regardless of associated costs or expenses incurred. Furthermore, OSFI encouraged ICANN to consider the issue in connection with the possible introduction of .bank.

Concerns from European Banking Authority (EBA)

On February 2012, the European banking Authority expressed its concerns to ICANN regarding the possible risks of proposed financial TLDs such as .bank and .fin. According to EBA chair Andrea Enria, consumers may not be properly guided through and assume that a particular operator of a particular under the .bank domain space is a regulated entity by a competent authority in their own country. Furthermore EBA is also concern of the possibility that true banks and other regulated entities need to spend significant amount of money to protect their trademarks from abuses and frauds. Enria also cited that the benefits in operating the proposed TLD is not yet established and there are still technical issues that needs to be discussed and resolved. EBA requested ICANN to ban any applications for the two proposed financial TLDs.

ICANN COO Akram Atallah sent a response letter to Enria and explained that the new gTLD program does not prohibit the application for the two possible gTLDs in question. Atallah also informed Enria about the available objections which can be utilized by EBA such as the string confusion objection, legal rights objection, limited public interest objection and community objection. In addition, he also cited the two the Governmental Advisory Committee may also provide an early warning or advice regarding the proposed new gTLDs. Furthermore, Atallah encouraged EBA to monitor the ICANN website until the closing period of the application process to determine the actual applicants for the .bank and .fin gTLDs and to work with them regarding their concerns on the use of the strings.

Top-Level Domain