A minimum of 36 financial TLD applications are aiming to get a “dotBANK” name approved by ICANN. Besides the community-based “.BANK” string applied for by ABA/BITS and its rival application from dotSecure, a number of strings ranging from .UBANK to .NETBANK are more or less trying to achieve the same. Most applicants play safe, by using their companies and already established brand names, like BARLAYS, ICBC, EVERYBANK, PICTET or ANZ. Most surprising: PayPal Inc. is not applying for the .PAY string, which is nonetheless applied for by a Russian funded Swiss entity. PayPal pushes the string “.SOFTBANK”, stemming from its Japanese partner. Here is a list of  36 banking related finTLDs we identified from ICANN’s  disclosure on June 13th, 2012.

A look into round 10 of ICANN new gTLDs with a run-up to 100’000 domains… http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/100000-new-gtlds-alter-global-branding-models-0138391

A smashing letter sent to ICANN by the European Banking Authority with concerns of regulators about a .bank or .fin application reveals horrifying
lack of understanding of the internet and ICANN process – not only that .fin is a no-go string (Finland), they have obviously never spoken to the parties concerned.

. If you need help or have questions, contact secretariat@corenic.org. We consult in benefits and risks involved in running your own gTLD.

“Security watchers are calling on net governance body ICANN to adopt a new top level domain name to be used exclusively by registered banks and financial organisations.” This statement is from 2007 – now we are closer to implement.

The SSWG – a security working group set up by financial Institutions – is proposing elevated security standards that would require Registry Operators to employ technical and operational policies that finTLDs are on the outset more secure than any gTLD currently available to financial institutions. CORE has done voluntary work for the SSWG.

time is flying, a few weeks left….

By definition, financial TLDs will have features that require specialized name spaces and can only be built in at the outset: a given name is only assigned to an entity that has rights to that specific name a systematic and predictable naming convention applies throughout the entire name space of the TLD. This of course helps to avoid confusion.

The public is used to general-purpose domains ending in .com or .ch or .de. These are generally registered on a first-come, first served basis. This means that they have no systematic naming patterns nor do they allow a user to predict the name of a given resource.