Mobai face biometrics and liveness back Norway’s new in-person ID issuance service

A nationwide biometric identity verification service from Postal and logistics services provider Posten and Mobai is launching across Norway to make it easier for people to obtain a digital ID.

The partners are offering the service to public entities and banks that need to perform identity verification as part of AML checks or to issue a credential like BankID, according to the announcement. And demand for in-person ID issuance services could be about to surge, as the issuance rules for the European Union’s Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallets are settled.

Publicly-owned Posten has more than 1,300 staffed service points across the country, and can help Norwegians living in remote areas or with low levels of digital literacy complete the process.

The ID check is carried out by a Posten representative on behalf of the relying party using the ID-kontroll app. The app uses face biometrics, liveness detection and ID document validation from Mobai.

Mobai is also part of a group working on homomorphic encryption to protect the security of biometric templates used by Norway’s banking industry.

A new way to meet an ongoing need

A “Personal Delivery Receipt” service Posten had previously offered for financial institutions to meet regulatory requirements by completing in-person identification checks for people who could not visit a physical branch was discontinued on November 1, Norwegian publication Bankshift reports (as machine translated). The service had become obsolete, but the need for a process with a “human in the loop” remained.

“We contacted Posten’s team directly and were quickly connected with a business development group working to modernize the system. Within a month, we realized we wanted to do this together — and that it was technically possible,” Mobai CEO Brage Strand told Bankshift.

He describes Mobai’s process of procuring and testing the devices Posten was already using for ID checks to make sure they could scan NFC chips in biometric passports and capture images with good enough quality for reliable face biometrics matching. Strand says he believes the EU will prefer this kind of process to be carried out with a human in the loop for EUDI Wallet and credential issuance to create a barrier against scaling fraud attacks.

The new biometric identity verification service from Posten and Mobai was piloted over the summer and is now live. More than a thousand checks have been completed successfully already, according to the report.

“This is a concrete contribution to our shared societal mission: ensuring that everyone, regardless of location or technological competence, has access to a simple and secure way to verify their identity and obtain a digital ID,” says Strand.

Article Topics

biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  document verification  |  face biometrics  |  ID verification  |  identity verification  |  Mobai  |  Norway