Brazil’s Infant.ID sees bump in biometric birth registration, national rollout expected

Infant.ID has surpassed 10,000 infant biometric registrations in Brazil’s state of Mato Grosso as the company prepares for the establishment of national regulations for infant IDs.

The Akiyama subsidiary began researching infant biometrics in 2013, leading to the development of a platform for collecting high-definition fingerprint biometrics from children between birth and five years old for transmission to public authorities. The company operated as Natosafe before rebranding as Infant.ID.

Brazil is in the process of introducing a biometric birth registration system to prevent baby swaps and child abductions, while also feeding into the country’s civil registry.  There are at least 500 cases of baby-swapping each year in Brazil, and perhaps more due to underreporting, the announcement says.

“Eleven years ago, we began this work with the purpose of contributing to the safety of children worldwide. Our scanner holds international certification and is already operational in countries across Latin America and the Middle East. In Brazil, six states have adopted this solution, collecting data in public maternity hospitals and civil identification institutes,” reveals Thais Akiyama, CEO of Infant.ID.

Akiyama also says the fingerprint data captured by Infant.ID’s biometric platform complies with international standards and is interoperable with global civil registration systems.

Infant.ID has been granted a patent for its technology from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Organization (USPTO), and the scanner the platform uses is one of four from Akiyama certified by the FBI. The FBI BioSpecs page lists four certified Akiyama biometric scanners, all of which feature fingerprint scanners made by Integrated Biometrics.  Three are certified for Appendix F, one for PIV.

Infant.ID’s deployment in Mato Grosso began in 2021 with a launch at the Civil Identification Center of the Legislative Assembly, and has now expanded to ten additional service points in the state. Infant.ID now registers 500 children per month across the state, on average, according to the announcement.

Goiás state also adopted the Infant.ID biometric platform in late-2024. During the first phase of the rollout in Goiás, Infant.ID scanners will be rolled out in 30 public maternity hospitals and integrated with the state civil identification system. Infant.ID tells Biometric Update in an email that its scanner will also be rolled out in Rio Grande do Sul, Paraíba, Sergipe and São Paulo this year.

The company’s technology has also been deployed in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, and has been used in proofs-of-concept in Uruguay and Peru.

Infant.ID notes that its scanner can collect fingerprints, palm prints and footprints from newborns, and fingerprints from mothers. The scanner can be easily used by a single person, including capturing data from premature newborns in incubators, the company says.

The company presented an upgraded version of its biometric scanner at Brazil’s Digital Citizenship Congress last September, soon after a research project showed that fingerprint biometrics captured with Infant.ID’s scanner could generate templates and be deduplicated.

The market for infant biometrics in Brazil appears to be solidifying, with Synolo launching its scanner to the national market in December.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  birth registration  |  Brazil  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  identity verification  |  infant biometrics  |  Infant.ID  |  Integrated Biometrics