Regula introduces test service to help customers scan ID documents’ NFC chips

The introduction of ID documents with integrated NFC chips in countries around the world has made remote identity verification easier for people and organizations equipped to use them. Regula is introducing a service to enable organizations implementing ID verification to test their identity document-scanning capabilities.

The Regula NFC TestKit includes sample documents embedded with fictitious identities that can be read through the chip or a machine readable zone (MRZ). Providing representations of identity documents with multiple data fields allows organizations to test the complete process for remote customer onboarding to find potential challenges or vulnerabilities, according to the announcement.

Businesses can utilize the TestKit to service to shorten the time-to-market of their identity verification processes, and prepare to handle the personal data of their customers in a secure way, Regula says. The service is customizable to allow businesses to test samples of any type of document from any country, based on their most likely customer onboarding attempts.

Regula claims the world’s most comprehensive database of identity document templates, at more than 13,000 from 247 countries and territories. More than three-quarters of countries now issue documents with NFC chips, the company says.

“Businesses currently strive to find suitable solutions to independently test the remote onboarding process of electronic documents, and until now, there have been no offerings on the market to address this gap,” says Ihar Kliashchou, chief technology officer at Regula. “With our new service for complete imitation of real IDs, we enable organizations to conduct highly efficient testing to identify and prevent any potential issues prior to the launch of their IDV systems.”

The new NFC TestKit is available exclusively to large enterprises purchasing Regula’s software.

Innovating based on customer feedback

Kliashchou tells Biometric Update in an email that around 70 percent of Regula’s technical innovations and product development ideas come directly from customer feedback. That includes its ongoing work on scanning ID document chips.

“Just a couple of years ago, server-side authentication of RFID chips in electronic identity documents did not exist, and verification was mainly done using smartphones with NFC technology,” he says. “While this method was considered acceptable for some time, it fell short of meeting the stringent security requirements of financial institutions. The need for a more secure and fraud-resistant solution became evident when the largest private bank in the world, in search of ultimate precision and trustworthiness in RFID chip verification, challenged us to improve smartphone-based checks, which could be vulnerable to interception and modification by fraudsters.”

The company embraced a “zero trust to mobile” approach, and implemented supplemental re-verification of electronic chips on a server. This guards against the cloning or manipulation of data on the chip, and eliminates the opportunity for attackers to alter results in the middle of the process, Kliashchou says.

Regula’s document authentication and biometric liveness detection software was added to financial service onboarding provider Azentio’s portfolio in a strategic partnership announced earlier this week.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital ID  |  document reader  |  document verification  |  identity verification  |  NFC  |  Regula  |  research and development