Selfie biometrics and mobile digital IDs proliferate for financial, government services

Biometrics and digital IDs on mobile devices made several of the most-read stories of the past week on Biometric Update, including mDL progress in America and Europe, interesting survey results from Onfido, and a major biometric authentication platform release by Mitek. Market forecasts for consumer biometrics are rising accordingly. An airport deployment of secunet’s biometric kiosks and national digital ID programs also drew headlines this week.

Top biometrics news of the week

Singapore’s relatively advanced digital identity system is being presented in a case study by the World Bank’s ID4D initiative, which recommends a gradual approach, adopting open technologies and investing continuously in human resources. Experts from Indonesia and Rwanda also provided updates on their national systems at the launch of study.

The Philippines has finally begun issuing chip-embedded PhilID cards, which come with embedded biometric data and QR codes for easy identity verification, following a pilot in September and October. The country is hoping to distribute 50 million of the physical credentials by the end of the year.

Austria has completed development of digital driver’s licenses, with the government calling it a milestone digital ID as the country seeks to enable sharing of important documents from mobile devices. Positive early reports on mobile driver’s licenses are coming out of American states, which are also beginning to align around ISO standards with AAMVA help.

A survey from Onfido suggests that consumers are adopting digital identity for online transactions despite being dissatisfied with how it works. An update on KYC checks carried out with Aadhaar also shows usage is up. Refinitiv and ABBYY have launched new products featuring selfie biometrics to address the market, and new face biometrics deployments have been announced by TendedBar, Veriff and iDenfy.

Mitek introduced a multimodal biometrics platform for passwordless authentication this week, which it is pitching for password resets, device rebinding and high-risk transactions. MiPass provides voice and face biometrics with liveness detection for each, with on-device data quality checks, can be integrated for account access through an SDK.

The global market for consumer biometrics will reach $11 billion within five years, according to a new report from Yole Group. The report identifies SWIR imaging and optical TFT sensors, along with growth for applications like law enforcement and border control, as growth drivers.

Apple has patented a way to generate and manipulate facial images, while academic researchers and others are coming up with a variety of ways to potentially identify deepfakes. Those methods range from the code level to a kind of silly-movement Captcha.

Simple fraud methods still work too. Even fintech executives appear to be fairly easily phished, based on an experiment conducted by authID at this year’s Money20/20. An email promising back-stage passes to a Foreigner concert caught 45 percent out of 505 recipients who opened it, including fraud and risk heads for major financial institutions.

France’s data protection authority has decided to fine Clearview AI the maximum allowed under GDPR, 20 million euros, and ordered the company to delete all data it holds on people in the country. The company replies that it does not operate in France, or anywhere else GDPR applies, and it does not hold enough data on anyone to determine if they are French.

The latest ID4Africa LiveCast was split between an interview with the director of a documentary film exploring the importance of identity documentation to people living in war-torn Syria, and a series of updates on biometrics. NIST’s Patrick Grother shared insights about facial recognition testing, representatives of Tech5, Integrated Biometrics and NIST discussed contactless fingerprints, and then Microsoft and Mastercard presented their respective approaches to digital identity.

The Czech Republic has begun a trial of airport biometric kiosks supplied by secunet for the incoming EU Entry/Exit System. After passengers were processed in just under a minute and a half each, on average, Prague Airport is adding 58 easykiosks to the 17 easygates it has in operation.

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Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometrics  |  consumer adoption  |  data protection  |  digital ID  |  facial recognition  |  fraud prevention  |  identity verification  |  KYC  |  selfie biometrics  |  week in review