Increasing adoption of biometrics technology by police, airports, financial institutions and schools top the news this week

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

Iris recognition

In what was arguably the most popular story in biometric news this week, Microsoft at Tuesday’s Microsoft Windows 10 devices event that both its new flagship phones — Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL — will feature infrared iris scanning technology.

Privacy guidelines

As part of the non-profit organization’s ongoing work in establishing regulations within the industry, the Biometrics Institute released its new privacy guidelines to its members to provide guidance on best-practice for biometrics and privacy.

Banking and biometrics

And following its successful pilot project last summer, Royal Bank announced it is introducing voice biometrics technology to identify clients who phone the bank’s call centers.

Fingerprints

Leading this week’s fingerprint-related stories was Precise Biometrics’ partnership with Fingerprint Cards (FPC) in which the companies integrated their respective fingerprint technologies in the new China-based smartphone, Coolpad Shine.

Turning over to an application of fingerprinting technology in the law enforcement space, the Denver police department will equip officers with Morpho’s MorphoIDent handheld fingerprint devices to help them identify suspects who lie about their identity.

Schools in New Rochelle, New York are working towards completing a roll out of a biometric time and attendance system by the end of the current school year.

ZKAccess announced it released its ML10-B fingerprint door lock with built-in Bluetooth technology.

Facial recognition

In facial recognition news, Mastercard is rolling out MasterCard Identity Check, the credit card firm’s new payments system that enables consumers to make online purchases using facial or fingerprint recognition technologies.

Orlando International Airport is the first US airport to add facial recognition to its automated passport control (APC) kiosks.

And in Ireland, the Department of Foreign Affairs launched a website and mobile app which allows users to apply for the new passport card by simply taking a selfie as a passport photo.

Industry insight

This week brought along three guest posts from industry experts. In the first post, Facebanx director of business development Steve Cook discussed the future landscape of the biometrics industry.

Next up, Robert Sprecher, Program Director for Face Recognition and Video Analytics for MorphoTrak discussed the accelerated development in application and effectiveness of facial recognition within video forensics.

And finally, Enacomm founder and CEO Michael Boukadakis emphasized the importance of American retailers implementing voice authentication technologies to combat fraud, identity theft and security breaches.

Analyst reports

Two notable analyst reports were popular this week, starting with our coverage of business solutions and services provider CSC’s report entitled “Next generation in-store technology: Where do shoppers and retailers stand?”, which finds that 25% of UK retailers are using facial recognition technology in an effort to monitor customer activities at their stores.

And closing out the weeks top stories, Goode Intelligence released a new report titled “Biometrics for Payments – Payments Security Gets Personal; Market and Technology Analysis, Adoption Strategies and Forecasts 2015-2020”, which forecasts that by 2020 over $5.6 trillion of payments will be secured by biometric technology.

Article Topics

APC kiosk  |  biometrics  |  Biometrics Institute  |  CSC  |  Enacomm  |  Facebanx  |  Fingerprint Cards  |  Goode Intelligence  |  identity management  |  Mastercard  |  Microsoft  |  MorphoIDent  |  MorphoTrak  |  Precise Biometrics  |  ZKAccess