The first week of September was eventful in mobile identity management. Two news items teased the future of mobile point of sale payments, a webinar had us talking about privacy issues in biometrics and wearable tech started to enter the BYOD movement.
On Thursday, in association with the International Biometrics and Identification Association and our sister site FindBiometrics, we hosted a webinar on privacy issues in identity management. Featuring guest speakers Chris Calabrese (Legislative Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union) Walter Hamilton (Vice Chairman of IBIA) and James Jasinski (Senior Vice President, Digital Signal Corporation), the webinar tackled emerging critical topics in biometrics and privacy rights.
Earlier this week, things started to get very exciting in the realm of mobile payments with reports coming in from all over the Internet that Apple is in the process of partnering with Visa, MasterCard and American Express to enable point-of-sale transactions via iPhone. The partnership is expected to be announced along with the iPhone 6 itself on September 9.
The physical mCommerce news doesn’t stop there, however. This week the newly announced Ascend Mate 7 from Huawei was revealed as allowing for point-of-sale payments via the Alipay mobile wallet app that will ship with the smartphone. The Ascent Mate 7 also distinguishes itself at the first Android smartphone to feature a capacitive touch sensor, a feature courtesy of Fingerprint Cards AB, who announced this week that the mobile is home to its FPC1020.
The FDA this week approved Vital Connet’s HealthPatch MD wearable biosensor for home use, allowing for remote care at all hours of the day. Vital Connect’s solution can check a great number of vital and motion biometrics, allowing professionals to stay connected to patients while freeing up bed space in hospitals. HealthPatch reads ECG, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, skin temperature, steps, posture and also features fall detection. Changes in any of these measurements can trigger customizable alerts that are sent to the assigned physician’s smartphone.
In wearable tech news, ClickSoftware announced this week that it has joined the Salesforce Wear Initiative. Dedicated to accelerating the adoption of wearable tech in enterprises, Saleforce Wear is the first ecosystem of its kind. In working with the ecosystem, Click Software is helping facilitate the wearable BYOD movement, allowing businesses to provide workers with job information, location and biometric data through the ShiftExpert app which can run on smartwatches like the Samsung Gear 2.
Sticking to the topic of wearables, in an attempt to accelerate the design of environmental and biometric sensing applications for Internet of Things products, Silicon Labs has introduced two new development kits that are targeted at the development of applications for home security systems, smart thermostats, smoke detectors, heart rate headphones, fitness bands and other wearable tech.
Finally, moving to the topic of invisible biometric factors, BioCatch announced that its mobile solution has exited its beta phase. BioCatch Mobile offers persistent behind-the-scenes authentication without presenting any sort of friction to an authorized user. After a cognitive profile is created, BioCatch Mobile verifies a user’s identity by taking into account factors like right or left handedness, device preference, hand tremors, press-size and hand-eye coordination. Additional factors also include network access, device ID and location.
Stay posted to Mobile ID World throughout the coming week as we report on Apple’s big iPhone announcement. Follow us on Twitter so you don’t miss a thing.
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