Nationwide Building Society has issued an update about making changes to its account security rules. The group clarified its policies after a customer demanded some answers.

The person contacted the savings giants about some new guidance from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The group, which is part of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), has recommended that people move away from passwords to passkeys.

The centre said that passkeys are "more secure" than passwords and that there is a move away from passwords to this new form of authentication.

In fresh guidance published on April 23, the group said: "The digital industry is moving rapidly towards offering passwordless authentication for logging into online services and accounts, and many major platforms already support it. The NCSC supports the public adoption of passkeys and recommends using passkeys over passwords wherever available."

Passkeys work by creating a unique piece of digital information linking your device to the service or account you are accessing. When using a passkey, you may have to use a built-in biometric sensor on your device, such as scanning your fingerprint or your face, or providing a pin code.

In light of the guidance from the NCSC, the Nationwide member wanted to know if the provider would take up the security measure. They said: "Nationwide does not appear to have issued a statement about why it does not use them for banking.

"As your customer I would like a statement please about when you will adopt passkeys." Nationwide responded to set out its current policies.

The provider said: "At present Nationwide has not adopted passkeys, any future changes will be clearly communicated in advance. We don't currently have an announcement or timeline to share on passkeys. However, we appreciate you taking the time to raise this topic."

The current rules for how you log in to online banking with Nationwide depend on how you are accessing the service.

If you are using the app, you can either use your fingerprint to log in with Touch ID or use the camera to verify your face through Face ID, or you can enter some digits from your passnumber.

To log in to internet bank, you need to first go to the log in page. You enter your customer number and date of birth and choose continue.

After this, you can either input your passnumber and get a code sent to you via text, or you can use your debit card and card reader to complete the log in.