Japan’s Cyberlinks and South Korean software company RAUMSOFT have set up a joint venture, Raum Japan, to sell identity verification services built on AI face recognition to Japanese financial institutions and local governments.
Raum Japan will distribute HancomAUTH, an AI face authentication product with liveness detection and deepfake countermeasures, and link it with Cyberlinks’ trust services, including JPKI, Japan’s public personal authentication service based on the My Number Card. Cyberlinks, based in Wakayama, said the venture will start with financial institutions and the public sector and will look at expanding into education, healthcare and private companies.
The move builds on Hancom’s deal to supply HancomAUTH to Cyberlinks earlier this year, after which the two companies worked on connecting the product to JPKI. Cyberlinks describes RAUMSOFT as a Hancom group company. Hancom Innotstream, the group company that announced the venture in South Korea, describes RAUMSOFT as a distributor to the Korean public sector, and says Hancom granted it a license to the face recognition product.
The venture is aimed at a change in Japan’s rules for remote identification. Japan plans to revise the enforcement regulations of its Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds in April 2027, changing how financial institutions identify customers remotely, and Hancom Innotstream expects that to create demand for replacement authentication products. Cyberlinks said it will adapt its services to Japanese rules and operating requirements as the review of identity verification and the expansion of digital procedures proceed.
The arrangement splits Hancom’s Japanese business into two channels. Hancom will supply the product directly to Japanese companies, while the joint venture will sell through Cyberlinks’ network of local government and financial customers. In August, Hancom also signed a memorandum with Japanese ICT company World Business Center to offer products including face authentication to its roughly 50 education customers and 40 medical customers. The product passed a South Korean financial-sector biometric evaluation earlier this year.
“With the establishment of this joint venture, we have built a Japanese business structure with direct supply and the local joint venture as its two pillars,” said Kim Yeon-soo, CEO of Hancom Innotstream. The company cited market research forecasting that Japan’s face recognition market will grow from about $200 million in 2025 to about $900 million in 2035.
Sources: Cyberlinks, Newsis, Maeil Business Newspaper
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
