Biometrics entering everyday activities via rising technologies

Biometrics underpin the new technologies that people will soon use on a daily basis for everything from payments to age checks to public services, as seen in the most-read articles of the week on Biometric Update. Mastercard is moving to passkeys for online transactions, New York is launching mDLs with Idemia technology, Yoti is rolling out on Facebook for age estimation and digital wallets are shifting consumer interactions towards a decentralized architecture.  Meanwhile Incode has struck the industry’s latest acquisition deal.

Top biometrics news of the week

Mastercard is planning to tokenize all online transactions in Europe by 2030, eliminating the need for consumers to enter payment card numbers when they make ecommerce purchases. Instead, people will use passkeys, and merchants Click to Pay, the checkout system Mastercard says it is making easier to integrate. The result, the payments giant says, will be seamless, accessible and secure interactions across digital channels.

Aviation stakeholders shared their vision for and experiences with biometrics and AI at IATA’s big industry event last week, while deployments expand around the world. TSA has added another PreCheck application point and CAT-2 biometric scanners have reached two more airports. Curacao is implementing biometric pre-verification, and self-bag drop is live at Kempegowda International in India, but airlines are concerned the EU is moving too fast with its EES.

Canada’s privacy regulator has asked for public input on age assurance guidelines. Meanwhile across the Southern border, laws are drawing legal challenges (in Indiana) and criticism on constitutional and free speech grounds (Mississippi, Tennessee), but still being passed (New York). The market is already moving, with Meta introducing Yoti’s biometric facial age estimation for Facebook users in Australia last week as the first step in a global rollout.

Testing and assessments of biometric technologies are proliferating, in a sign of the industry’s maturity. But as Idemia’s Terresa Wu explained in a webinar, buyers of the technology still face a challenge in understanding how to evaluate characteristics like accuracy and demographic differentials relative to each other. Ultimately, Idemia recommends a procurement framework with six criteria.

Mobile driver’s licenses are launching in New York with a dedicated app from Idemia. New York’s mDL is based on the ISO standard and expected to be accepted by a range of government agencies and businesses, beginning with all TSA checkpoints at airports with CAT-2 biometric scanners.

A pair of bills to restrict the use of biometrics in New York City were discussed in a public hearing on Monday, with Robert Tappan of the IBIA and Jake Parker of the SIA representing the biometrics industry. They were outnumbered by people supporting the bills, which would set strict limits on the use of biometrics in public spaces and apartment buildings.

Kaspersky has found a range of serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities in white-label face biometric access control terminals from ZKTeco. The five bundles of vulnerabilities could allow SQL injection attacks, biometric data theft, backdoors to adjacent networks and other security breakdowns. Kaspersky offers advice for organizations awaiting fixes from ZKTeco.

The Philippines has introduced new biometric authentication services as it officially launched the country’s national digital identity this week. Online portals for relying parties to register, and checks of selfie biometrics or ID document authenticity have been introduced, and four banks and a fintech company have already agreed to accept the national digital ID.

KuppingerCole’s EIC 2024 served notice of the arrival of decentralized digital identity in the everyday lives of regular people, in the form of verifiable credentials and digital wallets. Ping Identity outlined the applications of decentralized IDs in government and financial services and discussed the challenges of explaining the technical concept clearly, and ConnectID discussed reusable digital identity.

Nat Sakimura shares his theory on the role that data subjects’ control over connections between points of data about them in their empowerment by reference to Hugo’s Les Miserables, in a post on X. His comparison was discussed with Markus Sabadello in a keynote session at EIC.

Incode has acquired MetaMap to build up a comprehensive suite of tools for digital identity verification, including selfie biometrics, liveness detection, risk management and orchestration tools. MetaMap’s COO moves over into the CEO role, suggesting that both companies will continue to function in some capacity, at least for now.

Palm biometrics are now available on Anonybit’s infrastructure platform through a strategic partnership with Armatura, giving  Anonybit decentralized multi-modal biometric capabilities. CEO Frances Zelazny talks about the new partnership and improved capabilities in an interview with Biometric Update.

If you spot any interviews, editorials or other content we should share with the people in biometrics the digital identity community, please let us know in the comments below or through social media.

Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometrics  |  data privacy  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  week in review