NEXT Teams Up with Softlock for Biometric Card Project in Africa

NEXT Biometrics is teaming up with Softlock to carry out a biometric smart card pilot with the government of an unspecified African country. The new cards will combine a large-area fingerprint sensor from NEXT with Softlock’s operating system, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and biometric applets.

The government partner is hoping to use the cards for authentication in e-government projects. Assuming the pilot goes well, the cards will enable strong two-factor authentication through fingerprint biometrics, and will replace the (non-biometric) PIN codes and PKI tokens that the government in question is currently using for security.

The NEXT and Softlock project is now in the testing phase, and will move to a full pilot in 2020.

“Biometric authentication offers a high level of security and holds good potential in e-government, enterprise, healthcare and many more application areas,” said NEXT Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Alain Faburel.

“NEXT’s fingerprint sensor technology ideally complements our information security solutions,” added Softlock CEO Magdy Sharawy.

NEXT’s fingerprint sensors were recently featured in a digital identity collaboration between the Government of Madeira and Tactilis. Tactilis ordered 30,000 fingerprint sensors from NEXT earlier this year, while NEXT has since received a separate $100,000 order from another pre-existing customer.

NEXT has previously argued that large-area fingerprint sensors are more reliable because they are able to capture more biometric information.