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Core concepts

API version: 2.0

Vipps Login is to a large degree based on the OAuth2 and OpenID Connect standards. Some core concepts related to these are presented below.

OAuth 2.0​

OAuth 2.0 is the industry-standard protocol for authorization. Giving a proper introduction to the standard is out of the scope of this documentation, but there are many excellent resources on the web. If you are new to the subject we recommend this talk by Nate Barbettini at Okta. We also recommend reading OAuth 2 Simplified and having a look at the documentation.

Open ID Connect​

OpenID Connect is a simple identity layer on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol. It enables Clients to verify the identity of the End-User based on the authentication performed by an Authorization Server, as well as to obtain basic profile information about the End-User in a REST-like manner.

Some good sources to get you started are: Identity, Claims, & Tokens – An OpenID Connect Primer and OpenID Connect explained.

Supported OpenID Connect Flows​

Authorization Code Grant​

The authorization code grant type is used to obtain both access tokens and refresh tokens and is optimized for confidential clients. Since this is a redirection-based flow, the client must be capable of interacting with the resource owner's user-agent (typically a web browser) and capable of receiving incoming requests (via redirection) from the authorization server.

For more information see RFC-6749 section 4.1.

Tokens​

ID Token​

The ID token is a signed information object representing the authenticated identity of the user. As part of the OpenID Connect standard, the ID token is encoded as a JWT and signed using the JWS standard. The ID Token can be decoded for debugging purposes by tools such as jwt.io.

Example header:

{
  "alg": "RS256",
  "kid": "public:80f3c34a-9779-4e1e-b645-117f3b771af8",
  "typ": "JWT"
}

Example body:

{
  "at_hash": "tyFnH20TOmPZkgJU8e5iKw",
  "aud": [
    "vipps-integration"
  ],
  "auth_time": 1557319296,
  "exp": 1557322938,
  "iat": 1557319338,
  "iss": "https://apitest.vipps.no/access-management-1.0/access/",
  "jti": "62a85e56-3d45-4c7e-a055-46932093257a",
  "nonce": "",
  "msn": "123456",
  "rat": 1557319255,
  "sub": "c06c4afe-d9e1-4c5d-939a-177d752a0944"
}

You can read more at the OIDC standard.

It is important to validate the Id-token before using any data contained in it. See the OIDC standard on Id-token validation for the specifics. We recommend that you use a library for this. A good place to start is finding a library for your language at jwt.io.

Access token​

Access tokens are random strings that represent the authorization of a specific application to access specific parts of a user’s data.

These access tokens are provided by the access-management-1.0/access/oauth2/token endpoint. The token itself does not provide any information, but it can be used to fetch the data that the end-user has consented to share from the userinfo endpoint. Access tokens must be kept confidential in transit and storage.

Example:

"hel39XaKjGH5tkCvIENGPNbsSHz1DLKluOat4qP-A4.WyV61hCK1E2snVs1aOvjOWZOXOayZad0K-Qfo3lLzus"

For more information see RFC-6749 section 4.1.3-4.1.4.

Refresh token​

Vipps Login does not currently support refresh tokens.

Token endpoint authentication method​

The token endpoint is a standard OIDC endpoint used for requesting Access and ID Tokens. The default token endpoint authentication method is client_secret_basic.

It is possible to change the authentication method to client_secret_post in the Vipps portal. This setting will then apply to all login transactions on this sales unit. Go to How can I use client_secret_post for authentication? for more information on how to change the authentication method.

For more information on the token endpoint see OpenID Connect Core 1.0 and RFC-6749 section 3.2.

Scopes​

Scopes are space-separated lists of identifiers used to specify what access privileges are being requested. Vipps Login currently supports the following scopes:

ScopesDescriptionUser consent required
openidThis is the scope used to request an Id-token. It provides the claim sub which is a unique ID for the end user at that particular merchant. Note: Different merchants will get different subs for the same end user.no
addressThe user can have up to three addresses in Vipps: home, work and other. User addresses are given as claims address and other_addresses. The claim address returns the address set as default for the Vipps user. The claim other_addresses returns any other addresses of the end user. We recommend that merchants fetch all addresses on a user and allow the user to choose which address to use in the relevant context. Some users will not have any registered address, in these situations the claim address will be delivered, but the sub claims in address will be empty strings (e.g., "address" : {"country" : "", "street_address" : "", "address_type" : "", "formatted" : "", "postal_code" : "", "region" : "" }). If a user has information in the Unit, floor or other details field, this will be included in the street_address response. The Street address will then be presented first, before "\n". Then, the contents from Unit, floor or other details (e.g., Suburbia 23"\nUnit B5)yes
birthDateUser birthdate (verified with National Population Register)yes
emailUser email (verified). The flag email_verified : true in the response can be used by merchants to confirm that the email actually is verified for each request.yes
nameUser first, middle, and given name (verified with National Population Register)yes
phoneNumberVerified phone number (verified - the number used with Vipps)yes
ninNorwegian national identity number (NIN) (verified with National Population Register). Note, merchants need to apply for access to NIN. See Who can get access to NIN and how? for more information.yes
delegatedConsentsEnabled consents to be collected on behalf of a merchant. This scope is only supported in Vipps login from phone number, see Merchant delegated consents.yes

When requesting scopes that require user consent, a view listing these scopes will be displayed to the user with the option to allow or deny the consent request. This view is skipped if no scopes requiring consent are requested. The user can not make changes to the list of requested scopes, and can therefore not accept for example name and deny address.

We recommend asking for the minimal number of scopes needed for your use case to minimize the number of users that deny the consent request.