High volumes emerging from long-tail fingerprint biometrics projects

Fingerprint biometrics are prominent among the top stories of the week on Biometric Update, between an interview with Idex Biometrics, Idemia and Fingerprint Cards on the maturing partner ecosystem for payment cards, and a high-volume deal struck by BIO-key to supply mobile scanners to a Nigerian client. Large-scale projects like the EU Digital Identity Wallet and Ethiopia’s MOSIP implementation also made headlines, as did third-party identity verification architectures, with an authID.ai patent filing approved.

Top biometrics news of the week

The European Digital Identity Wallet has taken another step closer to reality with the launch of a tender to run four large-scale pilots. The plan is to test the DIW with national ID systems ahead of a planned launch in September, and proposals are due May 17. Details also continue to emerge about how the digital wallet is expected to fit into existing regulations.

Even the rules around EU ID cards remain contentious, however, with a local German court referring a case brought against the obligation to store fingerprint data by a civil society group to the European Court of Justice. The complaint argues that the compulsory cards violate the requirement for consent to process personal data, and a necessary privacy impact statement was never completed.

The long-term partnership on biometric payment cards between Idex Biometrics and Idemia has allowed for a deep integration of components, which in turn has allowed them to pass the final technical hurdles in the development of the solution, as executives from each company explain to Biometric Update in an interview. Fingerprint Cards CEO Christian Fredrikson also contributes his insights into the review of the market’s development from secure elements to the race for mass deployment.

FPC advanced its enterprise PC fingerprint biometrics push, meanwhile, with the company’s addition to the Microsoft approved vendor list (AVL). Only match-on-chip biometric sensors can be included on the AVL, and this type of solution is common in the enterprise segment, with a higher average selling price.

BIO-key is supplying tens of thousands of mobile biometric devices to Sterling Bank Nigeria online subsidiary Specta to enable them to enroll customers for inclusion in the national ID system. Nigeria’s National Identity Number (NIN) drive has increasingly appealed to private sector participants, and the Pocket10 FAP50 fingerprint scanners from BIO-key will go to agents across the country to bring enrollment processes to hard-to-reach populations.

MOSIP’s foundational ID partnership with Ethiopia’s government has been extended, and the partners plan to soon carry out extensive field tests and collect biometrics from 100,000 people to enroll them in the system. The next generation of the open-source digital ID platform, Asymmetric Amoeba, has been completed, meanwhile, and private sector participation in the ecosystem was boosted with a Miaxis Biometrics subcontract and compliance self-assessments from Mantra Softech.

authID.ai has been granted a patent for its method of authorizing transactions with multi-factor authentication through a third-party identity verifier. The company suggests the multi-party technology, already utilized in its service portfolio, separates the company by protecting users from spoofing and social engineering.

Data intermediaries are proposed as a way to deliver control and data privacy to consumers in a report from the World Economic Forum. The report’s authors tout a wide range of benefits to internet service users. The devil is likely to be found in the details.

The landscape of threats against remote identity verification consists of attacks from deepfakes to video injections, but BioID’s Ann-Kathrin Freiberg explained in an EAB webinar that there are methods already known to be effective against each. Freiberg reviews those methods, including liveness detection technologies are effective at spotting deepfakes.

Contactless technologies from Panasonic, including facial recognition, have been deployed to aid in Japan’s digital transformation plans, which are significantly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. A trial of self-service face biometric payment kiosks is among the retail and tourism-focused projects.

Finally, a sad note for the biometrics community with the passing of Jim Loudermilk, who had a distinguished career as a Senior Level Technologist for the U.S. Department of Justice, and was also a senior director at Idemia National Security Solutions.

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Article Topics

biometric cards  |  biometrics  |  deepfakes  |  digital identity  |  facial recognition  |  fingerprint recognition  |  fingerprint sensors  |  identity verification  |  multifactor authentication  |  national ID  |  week in review