Thales, Orange, awarded French biometric passport contract

Security technology company Thales, in partnership with IT provider Orange Business Services, will support the biometric data acquisition system for French passports.

Part of a new civil biometrics program in France, the system currently comprises around 4,000 biometric data collection devices, located throughout government offices in the country. Primarily, say the two companies, the devices capture fingerprints, photographs and biographical information for passport applications.

“This new contract has strengthened Thales’s leadership as the French market leader in secure identity solutions,” Marc Darmon, Executive Vice President, Secure Communications & Information Systems said. “Thales has assisted the French government in the production of national identity cards for over 17 years and has generated more than 250 million secure documents around the world. This latest contract further consolidates our position as a trusted partner in the field of secure identity documents.”

Thales says it will also develop a scalable biometric collection system for ANTS. The new system will be device-agnostic, to make it widely interoperable.

These systems will be based on Orange Business Services infrastructure.

According to the company, In Kenya, Thales was been selected by the Ministry of State for Immigration and Registration of Persons to supply 2 million secure national identity cards and support the upgrade of the identification system.

Reported previously, last month, Thales, in collaboration with Oberthur Technologies, announced participation in the Uzbekistan ePassport management system project.

According to a SecureIDNews report from 2012, 93 out of 193 U.N member states were issuing e-passports at the time, with 21 additional countries ready to deploy the technology in the next 2 years.

Article Topics

epassport  |  facial recognition  |  fingerprint  |  immigration  |  Thales