Biometrics projects scale to meet great expectations, from borders to payments

Biometrics projects are graduating to production, reaching scale milestones and expanding dramatically in the top stories of the week on Biometric Update.

Digital technologies, from electronic travel authorizations to eGates, are playing an increased role in border control. Biometric payments are attracting big-name investors who expect a wave of adoption. Reusable digital IDs are becoming more useful, even as national digital identity projects struggle with political and economic conditions. Social media’s headaches are scaling as AI’s worst social contributions flood platforms.

All this activity contributes to the growth potential of the leading biometrics developers, like ROC. The company is moving closer to the IPO milestone in its rapid scale-up, detailing its plans in a new SEC filing that assumes a price of $5.50 per share, which would bring in up to $17.1 million.

Border control

The UK issued nearly 20 million ETAs and more than 2 million visas in its first two years of using Entrust’s Citizen Identity Orchestration technology. CEO Tony Ball explains in an interview that it is only once these kinds of programs reach scale that others can be confident enough in their effectiveness, privacy protection and convenience to invest in doing the same themselves.

Biometric entry lanes are scheduled to leap from 15 to 65 airports across the U.S. in the first quarter of the year, under the TSA’s Touchless ID program. The air traffic spike anticipated with the 2026 FIFA World Cup lends urgency to efforts to speed up passenger processing with facial verification.

Central American country Belize has a population of less than half a million people, making investments in technology like biometrics for border control challenging. The U.S has stepped in under a data sharing agreement with DHS to provide Belize with biometric devices, including passport scanners from Regula and iris scanners from Iris ID.

Digital IDs

The bridges needed to enable businesses and other relying parties to use digital IDs are being built, with a beta launch by Okta for U.S. mDLs another new example. The company plans to add more verifiable digital credentials to the Digital ID Verification capability over time.

Telefónica Tech’s new SSI implementation product illustrates how quickly verifiable credential adoption is scaling. A timely Cybersecurity Insights post from NIST compares the mDoc and VC formats.

A reversal of the PM Kier Starmer’s proposal to make the use of a UK government-issued digital ID mandatory for Right to Work checks was seen as inevitable by many. Whether the government will embrace the digital identity ecosystem already in place remains to be seen.

Somalia is only a fifth of the way to securing the $125 million it needs for a full-scale rollout, according to NIRA DG Abdiwali Ali Abdulle. Authorities have a five-year plan, however, to go with a target of going from 1 million to 15 million IDs issued in the next four years.

Social media headaches

Meta is big enough to push back against age assurance requirements, arguing they should happen at the app store level. It is not big enough to avoid complying with Australia’s law, however, which is being looked at as a good model to follow by some in the UK.

Andrew Hammond, director of KJR, the AATT testing lead, joined the Biometric Update Podcast recently to discuss the evaluation, and offer his opinion on where the Australia’s age assurance project stands.

Meanwhile, X chatbot Grok appears to have tied together social media ills, deepfakes, child sex abuse material and biometric data privacy violations into a singular invitation to regulators around the world.

This is part of AI’s contribution to what Orchestrating Identity Chief Trust Officer David Rennie mulls as a potential “trust crisis” in the premier episode of The Trust Files, a new short audio series from Velvet and Biometric Update.

U.S. Congress has begun to move on the issue, with the Senate passing the DEFIANCE Act to address “image-based sexual abuse,” as Reality Defender calls it in a blog post on the legislation.

Retail payments

Major global businesses continue piling into biometric payments, in a range of forms.

A palm biometrics and crypto retail payment system was unveiled at NRF Big Show 2026. The system was developed through a partnership between Tools for Humanity, Authsignal and Qualcomm.

JP Morgan is also bullish on biometric payments, in particular because of their popularity with key markets like young people and India, where it has invested in biometric ecommerce verification provider ISG.

Intersec Dubai

Intersec Dubai 2026 kicked off this week with Sheikh Mansoor bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum opening the twenty-seventh edition of the event, which is a leading exhibition for security, safety and fire protection. This year’s edition brings together more than 1,200 exhibitors including Iris ID, HID, RecFaces, Suprema, Innovatrics and Idemia Public Security.

Please let us know if you spot any videos, podcasts or other content we should share with the people in biometrics and the digital identity community, using the comments below or social media.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  week in review