HID Global Finalizes De La Rue ID Acquisition

HID Global has completed its acquisition of De La Rue’s international identity solutions business, the company has announced.

The latter company is a UK-based manufacturer of passports, bank notes, and tax stamps. When HID Global first announced its plan to buy De La Rue’s identity business back in June, the company noted the latter’s significant market presence in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, explaining that the acquisition would help HID to strengthen its position in the global government-to-citizen ID market.

“HID Global and the De La Rue international identity solutions business share the common goal of helping governments fulfill their e-government initiatives today and in the future by converging physical and digital identities to increase efficiency, security and flexibility,” explained HID Global CEO Stefan Widing in a statement announcing the deal’s completion. Widing added that the acquisition “sets the stage for HID to leverage the decades-long relationships De La Rue has had as a prime citizen ID supplier providing HID’s innovative solutions to governments seeking to modernize.”

For its part, HID is already in quite a strong position. The company says that its citizen identification solutions are currently being used in 60 percent of all government-issued electronic ID projects globally. But going forward, the addition of De La Rue’s identity business means that HID will benefit from the company’s design, data analysis, consultancy, and software capabilities, including solutions for civil registry and vital statistics (CRVS), HID says. It will also further boost HID’s ability to produce secure identity documents on an end-to-end basis.

This is the latest in a string of acquisitions on HID Global’s part. The company announced it was buying HydrantID in early September, and announced its acquisition of secure card maker Placard just a few weeks ago. It also bought fingerprint reader specialist Crossmatch roughly a year ago.

(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)