UK Parliament Passes a Potentially Impactful Bill – Identity New 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:

Vietnam’s State Bank May Require Biometric Authentication for Some Money Transfers

An official with the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has suggested that biometric authentication may be required for money transfers exceeding a certain threshold. Speaking at a seminar on bank account fraud, the Deputy Head of SBV’s Payment Department, Le Anh Dung, said that the minimum threshold could be VND 10 million, or roughly $411. The official also said that SBV may change regulations so as to let credit institutions implement biometric authentication when transactions exceed certain thresholds.

UK’s ‘Online Safety Bill’ Passes

The United Kingdom’s parliament has passed the “Online Safety Bill”, a controversial piece of legislation that will, among other things, require online publishers to implement age verification processes when granting access to sensitive content that is not appropriate for minors. That requirement could be a boon for the country’s “Identity Service Providers” offerings age verification systems, such as Yoti. But language in the bill that seems to require messaging platforms to scan messages for signs of abuse has upset other major tech companies like WhatsApp, which argue that such a requirement would undermine the use of end-to-end encryption.

Iowa School District Embraces Biometric Security for Visitors

The Marshalltown Community School District in Iowa will implement an access control system for visitors that features facial recognition technology. Members of the Marshalltown Community School Board voted this week to procure the Visitor Aware SingleWire system with the help of $22,506.25 in funding from the Iowa Safety Grant. The system will require a visitor to any School District building to scan an ID card with an iPad, or to type in their information if they don’t have an ID card. At the Board’s meeting, the district’s Director of Technology, Amy Harmsen, indicated that the system’s facial recognition technology would match visitors against criminal databases.

1Password Rolls Out Passkey Support

The password manager platform 1Password has now rolled out passkey support for its iOS users. After an earlier promise to support the authentication system in the spring of this year, 1Password belatedly started a pilot test in July. Now, it’s letting all users running iOS17 and iPadOS17 take advantage of the passwordless authentication system to access their secure password vaults, and the company says that it will bring passkey support to Android users as soon as Google has finished working on the necessary APIs.

InterBio Wins Trio of Contracts for Indonesian ID System

InterBio, a subsidiary of TOTM Technologies, has been awarded a trio of contracts from the Directorate of Population and Civil Registration of Indonesia’s Ministry of Home Affairs. One contract, valued at $1.3 million, entails the maintenance of the country’s National ID system from September to December of this year. The second and third contracts concern the development of a new Automated Biometric Identification System for the National ID system, and together amount to $740,000 for a work period of June to October. The wins come after a $3.1 million Annual Technical Support and maintenance contract concerning the National ID was awarded to the company as part of a consortium partnership with Telkom Indonesia.

NEXT Biometrics Gets Another Indian Partner

NEXT Biometrics has established a new customer agreement in India, with an unnamed OEM ordering its FAP 20 fingerprint sensors. The order is valued at NOK 15 million, and deliveries are expected to start by the end of the first quarter of 2024. The development comes after NEXT revealed that its partner Access Computech Pvt. Ltd. (ACPL) had obtained a key certification with respect to India’s Aadhaar national ID program, opening the door to recurring orders over the next year. “We continue adding local partners to increase our market share in India, the world’s largest biometric market,” said NEXT’s Sales and Marketing SVP, Ulf Ritsvall. “NEXT is now even better positioned in reaching its goals and todays NOK 15 million order will strengthen NEXT on its growth trajectory.”

iProov, Journey.ai, and Veriff Come to New Online Marketplaces

iProov has established a partnership with Ping Identity, bringing its selfie-based identity verification solution to the latter’s PingOne DaVinci platform for enterprise security. In so doing, iProov has officially joined the Ping Identity Global Technology Partner Program. “Partnering with Ping Identity will help us to expand our reach even further and we’re delighted to be bringing this integration to PingOne DaVinci,” said iProov’s Chief Product and Innovation Officer, Joe Palmer.

Journey.ai has brought its identity technology to the Five9 CX Marketplace, which offers a range of third party tools for various customer experience applications. Journey.ai’s offerings are focused on onboarding and authentication. They enable Five9 customers to add user authentication options to their websites and apps that leverage the end user’s biometric authentication systems. Journey.ai’s “Agent Authentication” solution, meanwhile, enables businesses to verify their own employees with a face scan.

Veriff, meanwhile, has brought its selfie-based identity verification system to AWS Marketplace. The solution uses facial recognition to match an end user’s face to their photo ID, and Veriff says it can analyze over 11,300 different kinds of government-issued ID across 48 languages. “Online identity fraud is a major concern for consumers and businesses, so we are delighted that Veriff is one of a few identity verification providers on AWS Marketplace, making this technology more widely available to those that need it,” said Veriff’s VP of Strategic Revenue, Brian Krause.

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September 20, 2023 – by Alex Perala