Top biometrics news stories, week ending September 28

Here’s a recap of most popular and noteworthy biometrics industry news that appeared on BiometricUpdate.com this past week.

Biometrics Week in Review: facial recognition app Google Glass, Apple Pay merchant fees, BIO-key NEXT Biometrics partnership, Alibaba and FIDO Alliance, FBI’s NGI database, LA County biometric database, new fingerprint scanning process, Bionym’s $14M financing round, MasterCard biometrics pilot.

FacialNetwork releases new demo of facial recognition app on Google Glass – FacialNetwork announced it has released the second demo video of its facial recognition search engine NameTag on Google Glass. The demo shows NameTag on Google Glass quickly scanning 20 faces and leading to the correct match results for each person in real time.

Use of biometrics gets lower transaction fees for Apple Pay merchants – Apple announced that it is allowing Apple Pay merchants to pay card present rates for all transactions consumers make in store using their mobile phones, which will save them as much as 1.25 percent on each transaction.

BIO-key International, NEXT Biometrics Group ASA establish hardware and software partnerships – BIO-key International and NEXT Biometrics Group ASA announced that they have established hardware and software partnerships which will enable both companies to reinforce their offerings.

The FBI says its biometric identification database is now fully operational – The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) division announced its biometric identification system, Next Generation Identification (NGI), is now in full operational capability phase.

Alibaba becomes board member of the FIDO Alliance – Alibaba Group is now a board member of the FIDO Alliance, joining the roster of members who share technology and collaborate to deliver open specifications for universal strong authentication that enables FIDO-compliant authentication processes to be interoperable, secure and private.

FBI’s new NGI system leads to faster and more accurate responses – The FBI said that its new biometric identification system, Next Generation Identification, has resulted in faster and more accurate matches in the criminal history record database.

LA County Sheriff’s Department to launch biometric ID system with little discussion – The new system that the department will ultimately roll out will be the largest law enforcement repository outside of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and will augment the FBI’s Next Generation Biometric Identification Program.

Canadian researchers developing new fingerprint scanning process – The researchers have developed a new biometric system at the Institute for Diagnostic Imaging Research in Windsor that can scan a finger into a 3-D image 2 mm from the skin’s surface.

Biometric wearables developer Bionym closes $14M financing round – Bionym announced it has closed a US $14 million Series A round of funding led by Ignition Partners and Relay Ventures and also includes Export Development Canada, MasterCard, and salesforce.com’s corporate investment group, Salesforce Ventures.

MasterCard biometric verification system achieves 98% success rate in pilot – MasterCard said that its biometric verification system, which combines both voice and facial recognition, has achieved a 98% success rate in its pilot trials.

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Article Topics

Alibaba Group  |  Apple Pay  |  BIO-key  |  biometrics  |  Bionym  |  FacialNetwork  |  FIDO Alliance  |  Google Glass  |  Mastercard  |  mobile payment  |  NameTag  |  Next Biometrics  |  NGI  |  police  |  Touch ID