Startup Keyo’s palm vein biometrics ready for complete ID management applications

New York-based palm vein biometrics developer Keyo is launching its identity management network to provide privacy-focused physical and logical access control.

The move follows an investment of $7 million from Netflix Co-founder Marc Randolph and others. TechCrunch refers to it as a seed round.

The Keyo Network consists of its multispectral biometric scanner, the Wave, a mobile app for linking and managing accounts and credit cards, a partner program and app store for enterprises, and a cloud-based back end with military-grade encryption.

Keyo partnered with Fujitsu back in 2017 to develop a palm biometric payment authentication system. The company says there are now more than 15,000 of its palm scanners deployed around the world. Applications include hospital check-ins in the U.S., office door security in Mexico, and retail payments in Rwanda, according to the announcement.

Imprivata integrated Keyo vein biometric scanners with its PatientSecure solution for healthcare facilities in 2020.

The company says the Wave can identify individuals with scans from various angles, distances, and hand positions.

“We’re on a mission to create the first truly secure, private and seamless global identity system – a paradigm shift in how we identify ourselves throughout our daily lives,” says Jaxon Klein, CEO at Keyo. “The platform is purpose-built for scalability, compliance and interoperability so that partners can easily add biometric identity to their own products and services, and so that people no longer need to rely on scraps of metal, paper, or plastic to identify themselves.”

Keyo also claims that its biometrics support regulations including BIPA and GDPR.

There are currently 33 Keyo employees, and the company is expanding its team at the rate of around one a week.

“One of the things we’ve gotten really good at is scalable supply chain deployment,” Klein tells TechCrunch. “We’ve deployed 15,000 devices just recently, and we manage our supply chain internally. Even pre-pandemic, we’ve been building out our supply chain in North America — largely in the U.S. We’ve built a lot of institutional knowledge and capabilities around operating and expanding supply chains. We are really unique in the hardware space — or part of a very small cohort — that designs and builds their own devices, that’s entirely distributed.”

Klein admits that the company did not initially grasp the difficulty of achieving its ambitions when it embarked on its first round of press engagement in 2017, but says the company is now ready to scale globally.

Article Topics

access control  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  funding  |  identity management  |  Keyo  |  palm biometrics  |  vein recognition