Partnerships Aplenty in Biometric FinTech – 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:

Signicat Integrates Italian Digital ID

Norway-based Signicat has integrated Italy’s digital identity system, “Sistema Pubblico di Identità Digitale” (or “SPID”), into its platform, allowing European companies and agencies to leverage SPID for efficient customer authentication and onboarding. Launched in 2016, SPID is meant to give Italians access to various online services using a single set of credentials; Signicat says it’s now used by 35 million people in the country. SPID is also eIDAS compliant, suggesting it may be adopted by more identity services providers in the EU in the future. For now, though, Signicat CEO Asger Hattel says his firm is “proud to be the first, and currently only, company outside Italy to offer digital identity verification through SPID.”

Finland Pilots Digital Passport

Finnish authorities are piloting a digital passport in a partnership between Finnish Border Control, Finnair, the airport company Finavia, and airports in Edinburgh, London, and Manchester. Participants are able to use a mobile-based “Digital Travel Credential” when moving through border control, but the registration process is somewhat involved, requiring users to go in person to the Vantaa Main Police Station, where they will submit their physical passport and undertake a face scan. A face scan matches the user to their DTC upon arrival in the UK. The trial is slated to run until February.

New Abu Dhabi Airport Terminal to Feature Biometric Passenger Processing

Authorities at the Abu Dhabi International Airport have set a launch date for a technologically sophisticated new terminal. The Midfield Terminal Building, or “Terminal A”, will become operational in November, and will reportedly feature “a range of interconnected biometric systems” to facilitate passenger processing. Officials believe the new terminal will be able to process 11,000 travelers per hour.

Huawei Spreads Biometric Banking Trend in UAE

Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) has integrated a number of banking apps from firms based in the United Arab Emirates into its Huawei AppGallery, which acts as a curated app marketplace for Huawei device users. The set includes banking apps from ADCB, ENBD, FAB, Mashreq, ADIB, and Standard Chartered Bank UAE. In announcing the integrations, HMS emphasized that the apps allow users “to make secure payments using facial recognition or fingerprint authentication,” further underscoring the global spread of biometric authentication in mobile banking.

Hudini Leverages Singapore’s Visitor Verification API for Hospitality

Hudini, a ‘smart hospitality’ company based in Singapore, has obtained EVA-ready certification from the Singapore Tourism Board. Launched by the Board in 2019, the “E-Visitor Authentication” system is an API meant to enable the use of facial recognition for verifying the identities of international visitors. With its certification, Hudini can now leverage that API for hotel check-in, and is offering hospitality providers a solution that would match guests to their passport photos.

IDVerse Teams With FutureBank

IDVerse has partnered with FutureBank, a Palo Alto-based firm that offers a middleware platform designed to give banks access to third-party technologies. The partnership will give FutureBank clients access to IDVerse’s identity verification solutions. IDVerse rebranded from its previous moniker, “OCR Labs”, earlier this year, in order to better reflect the breadth of its IDV offerings beyond Optical Character Recognition technology. IDVerse also offers face biometrics technologies including age verification and liveness detection, and has obtained numerous certifications under the United Kingdom’s Digital Identity & Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF).

OneID Raises £1 Million

Another of IDVerse’s partners, OneID, has raised £1 million in funding from ACF Investors, a New York-based firm focused on the lower middle market. Based in Stratford-upon-Avon, OneID relies on partnerships with United Kingdom banks to verify the identities of end users. ACF Managing Partner Tim Mills said the firm has the potential to “touch some 50 million UK citizens and make bank-verified digital identification the norm in the UK.” OneID integrated IDVerse’s digital identity verification technologies into its platform earlier this year. It also recently partnered with Sumsub, providing its own identity verification solution for the latter’s IDV platform.

Astra Embraces Plaid’s IDV Solution

Astra, a FinTech firm offering a payments API, has extended an existing partnership with Plaid to collaborate on a solution meant to embed instant transfer capabilities into FinTech products. Key to the collaboration is Plaid Identity Verification, a service that leverages numerous mechanisms to confirm that end users are who they claim to be. This includes matching identity documents to selfie images, as well as risk scoring based on user behavior, and the device and network being used, among other factors. “By pairing Plaid Identify Verification with the payments technology offered by Astra, our joint customers will be able to onboard users and spin up real-time transfers in the same session,” explained Tamara Romanek, Plaid’s Head of Partnerships.

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September 5, 2023 – by Alex Perala