Though the week ended on a confusing anti-climax in the world of mobile device biometrics, with a bogus press release informing the media that Samsung had purchased Fingerprint Cards AB (FPC) bringing stock trade to a halt and a whole bunch of damage control and disappointment to the internet, a similar acquisition (only true this time) meant excellent news for fingerprint biometrics.
After the stock market closed on Wednesday Validity Sensors announced that it has been purchased by human interface solutions provider Synaptics, signalling the advent of fingerprint sensors ubiquity. President of findBIOMETRICS Peter O’Neill was covering Money2020 in Las Vegas when this happened and was able to sit down with Validity CTO Sebastien Taveau and talk about exactly what this means for everyone involved. The audio of this interview is still available on the front page of Mobile ID World.
Staying on the topic of Money2020, which will be receiving follow up coverage all next week, three technologies that were showcased at the event are proving the viability of the emerging mobile commerce market. ArrowEye launched its EMV On-Demand solution encouraging card suppliers to get on to the smart chip standard, ValidSoft offered a voice biometrics alternative to payment protection and Typhone’s Connected Smart Card technology put the focus on exactly what devices should be doing the talking in an authentication transaction.
Focusing on cyber security, specifically in online financial transactions is going to be a theme all through October, as it is National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). In support of educating the public and understanding the general misconceptions that surround mobile commerce and online transactions, PayPal and the National Cyber Security Alliance released the results of a survey, showing that over half of the Americans surveyed are comfortable with the prospect of fingerprint biometrics on their mobile devices of choice.
This is good news, because with the rate that biometric smartphones are popping up, it doesn’t seem like users will have much of a choice but to get comfortable with fingerprint protection. The first smartphone to feature Precise Biometrics’ fingerprint algorithm which was launched in Asia on Monday. The release springs as the result of a partnership between Precise Biometrics and FPC that has Fingerprint Cards licensing the latter company’s algorithm. Precise Biometrics was affected by Friday’s press mishap for the same reason, however, and also suffered from a stock trade halt – Precise Biometrics counted as a casualty by association, powering FPC technology with its software.
This demarcation of hardware and software service is becoming increasingly necessary with hard authentication is becoming a mainstream priority as a result of the emerging post-password paradigm. To this end Toronto identity networks provider SecureKey has divested its hardware security token group to Kili Technology Corporation: a company comprised of SecureKey’s engineering team and lead by its former vice president of hardware engineering.
Next week be sure to keep tuned to Mobile ID World and our sister site findBIOMETRICS for followup coverage of Money2020 as we provide you with what the future has in store for exciting developments in mobile commerce.
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