Identy.io has earned some validation from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) after submitting its fingerprint matcher to the Proprietary Fingerprint Template Evaluation III (PFT III) on earlier this month. According to the public results, the company’s algorithm (PFT identifier identy+0001) recorded a false-non-match rate (FNMR) of 0.0071 at a false-match rate (FMR) of 0.0001 on the Arizona Department of Public Safety dataset, 0.0109 on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dataset, 0.0061 on the Port-of-Entry BioVisa dataset, and 0.0077 on the US-VISIT #2 dataset. Each score ranks within the ten most accurate results ever posted to PFT III, while average processing time came in at 992 microseconds, placing the matcher among the fastest in the benchmark.
PFT III has served as the industry’s reference test for one-to-one fingerprint matching since 2019, with roughly three dozen algorithms—from vendors such as Aware, Innovatrics, and Idemia—appearing on the leaderboard. Previous high-profile results include Aware’s 2024 submission and this year’s strong showing by Identy.io. The evaluation uses legacy scanner images only, but Identy.io’s matcher was trained on both touch and touchless data, enabling what the company says is superior interoperability across capture modalities.
Identy.io’s technology performs extraction and matching entirely on mobile devices, relying only on the handset’s camera and flash. “We’ve taken the big machines everyone tests with and made them mobile,” explained CEO Jesús Aragón in announcing the results. “Our matcher works not just in the lab—it works in the real world, on real devices, where it’s needed most.” The company first previewed its contactless capture approach at Connect:ID 2021 and has since expanded commercial operations, including a recent leadership hire to drive North American growth announced earlier this year.
NIST validation positions Identy.io to compete for high-assurance identity-verification projects in government, finance, and healthcare—sectors now embracing smartphone-based biometrics for everything from border control to attendance management. Regular participation in NIST testing has become a de facto requirement for fingerprint vendors; last year Innovatrics highlighted an FNMR of 0.982 percent in NIST’s latent benchmark to bolster its own credibility. Identy.io now joins that upper tier of independently assessed suppliers.
PFT III focuses on verification accuracy, but Identy.io says its matcher also operates in one-to-many identification mode and can run offline, on-device, or in constrained field conditions—features designed for national ID programs and remote onboarding workflows. As governments across the world shift toward mobile-first, multimodal identity platforms, high-speed, touchless-ready fingerprint engines validated under rigorous public tests are likely to become central components of future digital ID ecosystems.
Sources: NIST PFT III, Security Info Watch
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April 25, 2025 – by Ali Nassar-Smith
