Veridium issued grant to pilot fingerprint solution in developing countries

Veridium has been issued a grant from the Digital Financial Services Innovation Lab, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop and field test biometric authentication technology on unmodified Android smartphones in order to improve the way people in developing countries can access and enroll in financial and government programs.

The grant will allow Veridium to roll out a pilot project in a developing region to allow fingerprint verification to be deployed instantly from any location and with no marginal cost.

Access to these types of services is crucial for low-income and developing countries as they often lack the appropriate identity documents, making them more susceptible to other issues like fraudulent financial activities, money laundering and the diversion of government resources.

The grant is issued by DFS Tech, a Gates Foundation-supported initiative designed to engage scientists, researchers and engineers to address the identity management challenges of low income individuals and developing countries through the use of biometrics.

The project aims to further develop software-based, anti-spoofing fingerprint capture technologies that can capture and verify fingerprints using only the sensors on an unmodified Android smartphone.

“We are excited to have been chosen by the Digital Financial Services Innovation Lab and the Gates Foundation to participate in this groundbreaking pilot program,” said James Stickland, CEO of Veridium. “We look forward to being able to make a true and lasting impact on developing nations in their effort to enroll and authenticate individuals in financial and government programs.”

Veridium’s proprietary biometric solution, 4 Fingers TouchlessID, captures four fingerprints at once, contactlessly, using a phone’s rear camera and flash.

Capturing four fingers instead of just one fingerprint makes it far more difficult for would-be criminals to spoof due to the complexity of the data collected.

The solution does not need any additional hardware or sensors and is ready to deploy within any custom app using Veridium’s SDK, which eliminates the need to deploy expensive hardware peripherals or for individuals to buy new biometrically-enabled phones.

As part of the grant, Veridium is developing liveness detection technology to detect if fingerprints are real and not merely a photograph.

Using the phone’s camera, the user will capture two photos of their fingers while moving them slightly, from which a 3D model is created.

The liveness detection technology will reject any fingerprint image when it realizes the person being authenticated is not who they say they are.

Veridium’s technology, which ensures the utmost privacy and security for end users, are built using IEEE 2410, the Biometric Open Protocol Standard (BOPS), and with Visual Cryptography.

Earlier this year, Verdium announced that VeridiumAD, the company’s enterprise-ready multi-factor biometric authentication solution, has been verified as Citrix Ready.

Article Topics

biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  pilot project  |  Veridium