Technique for creating a strong authentication for a user using a portable electronic device held by the user. A central server requests an external authentication service provider, which provides a first set of user information, to authenticate the user. The user captures a still or moving image of a valid physical piece of user identification and the central server performs optical character recognition on the image, thereby obtaining a second set of user information. The central server compares the first and second sets of user information. In case the first and second sets of user information match, the portable electronic device is associated with the user and a piece of user-specific authentication information.