Ipsidy burnishes reputation as top player in biometric tracking

• Ipsidy operates an Identity-as-a-Service platform that delivers a suite of secure, mobile, and biometric solutions
• The New York biometric specialist has four operating subsidiaries in Colombia, South Africa, Peru, and the UK
• In Colombia, its technology refills bus transit cards and processes electronic money transfers for the postal service

What Ipsidy does:

Ipsidy Inc (OTCMKTS:IDTY) is a dominant player in the crucial multi-factor authentication and identity management space. The New York company operates an Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) platform that delivers a suite of secure, mobile, and biometric identity solutions.

Traditional identity management systems and processes are no longer capable of keeping up with modern demands and increased security risk. That’s where Ipsidy fills a void by providing biometric identification, verification, electronic transaction authentication, and processing solutions. 

After the massive hacks of Equifax Inc (NYSE:EFX), Target Corp (NYSE:TGT) and Home Depot (NYSE:HD), former CEO Philip Beck and his Ipsidy team saw a huge market for the company’s proprietary biometric technology.

Founded in 2011 as ID Global Solutions Corp, Beck and CFO Stu Stoller came on board in 2017 and re-imagined the company as Ipsidy — a play on the Latin word “ipse,” which means self. Together with the original founder Tom Szoke and his team, the group has built a suite of new authentication products around its core of existing applications.

The company’s business was the legacy of its roots as ID Global Solutions, which provided biometric fingerprint-matching technology to the US Transportation Safety Administration. The acquisitions of MultiPay in 2015 and CardsPlus in 2017 bolted on transactional routing and credentialing products.

Beck and his team were not newcomers to multinational transactions and authentication. He started Planet Payment Inc in 1999 and built it into a Nasdaq-listed company before it was sold in 2017. Beck retired in 2020, passing the company onto new leadership.  

How is it doing:

In an update to kick off 2021, CEO Phillip Kumnick, who took over the top post in May 2020, told shareholders that Ipsidy is excited about the demand for its mobile biometric platform services, noting that the mandates and additional opportunities that the group has secured will start to come to fruition in the new year.

The firm is currently completing implementation for the launch of its solution with an international bank – planned for the first quarter of 2021. The solution will deploy Ipsidy’s biometric identity verification and FIDO compliant strong authentication services for remote digital onboarding, elimination of account passwords, and combating identity fraud for the bank’s international customers.

Additionally, Ipsidy is completing an integration effort with LoginID between its biometric identity verification platform and the LoginID FIDO as a Service platform. The combined solution is designed to deliver a FIDO2 strong authentication and password-free access solution that securely and automatically creates a digital chain of trust between biometrically verified individuals, their accounts, and their devices.

The company is also teaming up with Wipro Limited (NYSE:WIT) — a massive global information technology, consulting, and business process services company — to help its enterprise customers combat identity fraud and to deliver seamless FIDO2-compliant Passwordless login.

Verification of an individual’s identity during enrollment, as well as ongoing authentication of that identity, underpins the basis of a new form of trust and security. To that end, Wipro intends to offer Ipsidy’s facial biometric identity solutions — Proof and Verified. 

Ipsidy has also launched Access, a biometric-tracking program that protects the perimeters of buildings or public events using just a tablet and a Bluetooth beacon. Thanks to an agreement with Ayonix Face Technologies, Access is able to adopt the speed and detection capabilities of Ayonix’s 3D facial recognition technology.

The company also offers Transact, a mobile payments authorization network.Ipsidy is working with Intellicheck, a provider of identification-authentication and age-verification technology. And it has entered into reseller agreements with IECISA, which provides information technology services in 11 European countries and the Latin America Caribbean region. 

Financially, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has not been great for business but Ispidy managed in its latest earnings report to shrink its losses. For the period ended September 30, 2020 (its most recent earnings report), the company’s net loss narrowed year-over-year to $1.9 million from $2.4 million, reflecting lower general and administrative expenses. Since then, Ipsidy has secured more than $5 million of additional equity funding from existing and new investors. 

Inflection points:

• Tie-up with international bank planned for 1Q 2021
• Bring SkyOne lock to market
• Establish operations in the United Arab Emirates
• Shift strategy to close deals in Latin America as well as Europe, Middle East, and Africa region

What the boss says:

“2020 was also a period of significant transition for Ipsidy. I am proud of how the team at Ipsidy worked together to position our company for success in 2021,” CEO Phillip Kumnick said in his update for the year ahead. “We are very excited about the growing demand for our mobile biometric platform services and the future of our company.”

Contact the author: [email protected]

Follow him on Twitter @PatrickMGraham

Story by ProactiveInvestors