Big Contracts, New Partnerships, and More: Identity News Digest

Welcome to FindBiometrics’ digest of identity industry news. Here’s what you need to know about the world of digital identity and biometrics today:

Airport Biometrics

Australia is poised to finally upgrade passenger kiosks at international airports across the country after multiple delays. As InnovationAus.com reports, an initial plan was to replace IDEMIA SmartGates with new ones from Vision-Box, through a contract established in 2017. Two years later, the Vision-Box solution was deemed insufficient, and Home Affairs turned back to IDEMIA. Then the pandemic intervened. But a new set of biometric kiosks from IDEMIA will begin rolling out at Darwin Airport in November, with airports at Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Coolangatta, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney next in the queue. The gates will scan travelers’ faces, and facial recognition will eliminate the need to present tickets at the boarding gate. The rollout is expected to be completed by the end of 2024, with IDEMIA’s contract valued at $42.7 million.

Orlando International Airport’s Terminal C begins operations today. The high-tech new terminal features a biometric boarding system, based on facial recognition, for international flights. Other new bells and whistles include automated TSA lanes and an automated baggage drop system that also uses RFID technology to track luggage. The airport terminal was developed at a cost of about $2.8 billion.

Strategic Partnerships

Persona has entered into an agreement with Serpro that will see a powerful identity verification system emerge in Brazil. Persona is a Silicon Valley startup offering an identity verification platform that includes selfie-based biometrics and liveness detection. Serpro, meanwhile, is Brazil’s federal data processing service, and claims to be the largest IT company serving the public sector in the world. The companies’ collaboration will enable organizations operating in Brazil to verify customers by matching their ID information against data in the Brazilian Government Database, which includes data like national ID numbers and photo images.

Veriff has partnered with Shockoe, an award-winning mobile app developer. Veriff specializes in biometric onboarding, offering a selfie onboarding solution that uses facial recognition to match an end user to images of their official identity documents. Its partnership with Shockoe should help to funnel its selfie onboarding technology into a variety of apps and mobile-first digital experiences as Shockoe’s clients embraces the onboarding system.

Integrations and Product Launches

Telaeris’s XPressEntry software has now been integrated into IDEMIA’s ID Screen biometric tablets. The tablets are designed to facilitate access control via fingerprint scans. XPressEntry should help to make them more widely compatible with access control systems, over 30 of which support Telaeris’s software solution. The integration was announced at this week’s Security Essen trade show in Germany.

Suprema has launched a new biometric access control terminal, the BioStation 3. Its primary modality is facial recognition, touted by Suprema as the “representative contactless authentication method” of the post-COVID world; but it can also scan RFID cards, QR codes, barcodes, and mobile access credentials. BioStation 3 is 47 percent smaller than Suprema’s previous face-based access solution, FaceStation F2, and is ISO/IEC 27001 certified.

Executive Appointments

Trulioo has named Eric Morse as its new Chief Revenue Officer. Morse comes to the company from a nearly four-year term with Affirm, where he served as SVP of Sales. He has also held senior sales positions with Adyen, NetSuite, and Google, and he helped to manage certain business relationships at Microsoft from 2005 to 2010. In announcing his newest appointment, Trulioo CEO Steve Munford highlighted Morse’s “extensive experience leading revenue teams in high-growth companies selling complex global solutions”. The news comes after Trulioo’s appointment of a Chief Marketing Officer in April of this year.

Automotive Biometrics

Michigan-based Xperi is developing an in-car biometric system designed to monitor drivers for signs of distraction and drowsiness – a growing trend among automobile components makers that was evident in the recent InCabin trade show in Brussels. But the Xperi AutoSense solution takes things a step further by monitoring the facial expressions of passengers to assess how they are reacting to in-vehicle infotainment systems. Forbes reports that Xperi is currently working with “around eight automakers”.

Government Biometrics

The Macao government is now using selfie-based identity verification to let eligible senior citizens apply for pensions remotely. They can do so via the Macao One Account website or mobile app; the process involves providing bank account details and undergoing a facial recognition scan. The system is designed to automatically calculate the pension amount for each end user based on their particular circumstances.

Mobile ID

The State of Colorado has taken the next logical step in the evolution of mobile ID technology: letting users add virtual stickers to their virtual identity documents. The stickers, officially dubbed “affinity icons”, are meant to let mobile ID users indicate their personal interests through their virtual IDs, with virtual stickers dedicated to depicting activities like skiing or fishing, among other options. The mobile ID itself, meanwhile, has practical uses; read the full story on Mobile ID World.

Pivot to Justice

Clearview AI seems to be following through on a promise to make its facial recognition system available to public defenders. The company has announced JusticeClearview, which the company says is aimed at helping to exonerate individuals who have been falsely accused of crimes. The development comes on the heels of a New York Times story detailing how the company’s facial recognition system was used to track down an important witness in a case of vehicular homicide, clearing a man who was wrongly accused of drunk driving. But it isn’t clear how many cases would benefit from this unique application of the technology, nor has Clearview detailed how it will determine who gets to use JusticeClearview and how much it would cost.

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September 20, 2022 – by Alex Perala

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