BIO-key Lands $45 Million e-Commerce Biometrics Contract in Nigeria

BIO-key has landed a major e-commerce infrastructure contract that will solidify its presence in the African market. The contract is worth $45 million over the course of the next 18 months.

Through the contract, BIO-key will provide biometric hardware and software to support a Nigerian Ministry of Labour program that is expected to create jobs for one million recent college graduates in the country. The scalable e-commerce infrastructure will also help support a number of different industries, including finance, education, healthcare, retail, and identity management.

The program will train recent graduates to use BIO-key’s various biometric solutions, and will also equip those graduates with the requisite software and devices. It is being developed in consultation with several other organizations, including Imperial Education Services (IES), the National Electronic Labour Exchange (NELEX) of Nigeria, and Exponential Launch Africa Limited (ELA), which is itself an affiliate of the Technology Transfer Institute of Africa (TTI).

“NELEX is the Federal Government of Nigeria’s regulatory agency responsible for creating high quality employment across Nigeria,” said BIO-key Africa Managing Director and ELA Chairman Akintunde Jeje. “Our collaboration will reinforce our position as the premier biometric solutions provider in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.”

The news comes mere weeks after BIO-key signed a $30 million contract to provide biometric authentication for a Nigerian telecommunications company, and speaks to the incredible progress the company has made in the country in the past year. TTI joined the company’s Channel Alliance Partner program in November. BIO-key would then go on to open a BIO-key Africa subsidiary in Nigeria later that same month.

BIO-key previously provided a biometric client identification system for the Capitec Bank Holding Company in South Africa. Capitec recently revealed that it has registered more than 9 million customers since the in-branch system was first deployed back in 2015. 

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March 27, 2020 – by Eric Weiss