Accurate Biometrics receives recognition for both growth and service

Accurate Biometrics is doubly pleased and proud – to be recognized both locally, in a Daily Herald Business Ledger article, and nationally, with an Inc. 5000 award.

Accurate Biometrics made the Inc. 5000 list for the first time in 2016 for achieving a 60% growth rate in a 3-year period.

In an interview with the Daily Herald Business Ledger, President Peggy Critchfield stresses how important keeping up with technology is to remain competitive. Accurate Biometrics has gone through three major technological upgrades since their start in 2000.

While largely a B2B business – serving state, local and federal agencies, and private business – Accurate Biometrics is also offering important services directly to consumers. One key service is a complete check of their background records to find and expunge information that is inaccurate or outdated.

It took 13 years to reach their goal of recording 1 million sets of fingerprints. Accurate Biometrics expects to reach their goal of 2 million fingerprints next year.

Accurate Biometrics 2016 INC. 5000 RANK

Itasca's Accurate Biometrics seeks to expand fingerprinting services

 

Daily Herald Business Ledger, Anna Marie Kukec, 8/19/2016

Clearing up misconceptions about fingerprint biometric authentication

This week’s post revisits SmartMetric, whose announcement of smart credit cards with a built-in fingerprint scanner was the second post for this blog. One touch activates the SmartMetric credit card chip. The card can then be used withdraw cash or make purchases.

Introducing new technology can be an uphill climb. In an article this week, SmartMetric addressed misconceptions some people have regarding fingerprint biometric technology.

An example is the concern that one’s fingerprint can be copied and spoofed using a 3-D printer. As SmartMetric points out, in the time it would take to create a replica 3-D fingerprint, a thief can steal a hundred credit cards and associated PIN numbers. It’s theoretically possible, but not likely. Also, SmartMetric’s fingerprint reader is temperature sensitive.

While banks are concerned about the cost of issuing smart credit cards, the cost of fraud – from the actual transaction, to the possible loss of a customer, to the cost of gaining a new customer – is much more significant in the big picture. Annual credit card fraud in the US reached $8 billion dollars in 2014. 

While banks may be hoping that smart mobile devices may become a leading payment method, right now mobile payments represent a small percentage of transactions. One well-known phone company that is encouraging mobile payments is seeing only 3% of its customers making mobile payments. 

Credit cards are not going away any time soon. In SmartMertic’s research, 80% of consumers surveyed are concerned about credit card fraud. SmartMetrics card is the safest card yet, and it works with current ATM’s and credit card readers. Perhaps consumers should be given the chance to be able to use it.


SmartMetric -- Dispelling Misconceptions Regarding Biometrics

Market Wired News Room, August 12, 2016 14:07 ET

Research suggests fingerprint analysis may reveal ancestral background

Anthropologists have studied Type 1 fingerprint characteristics, such as pattern type and ridge counts. Law enforcement fingerprint analysis has focused on more specific Type 2 fingerprint characteristics – ridge ending and bifurcation (splitting into two ridges) – for individual uniqueness.

In a new study, both Type 1 and Type 2 fingerprint characteristics were examined to see if there were differences between the sexes, and also ancestral differences. While there were no significant differences between the fingerprints of men and women, there were significant differences in the Type 2 characteristics of the fingerprints of people with European American or African American ancestry.

More research needs to be done, on a larger and more diverse sample of fingerprints. But the results, if conclusive, will be helpful to law enforcement agencies, adding another layer of analysis in forensic science, and to anthropologists, in the study of global population structures.

Ancestral background can be determined by fingerprints

Matt Shipman for Phys.org, September 28, 2015

Sex, Ancestral, and pattern type variation of fingerprint minutiae: A forensic perspective on anthropological dermatoglyphics

Authors: Nichole A. Fournier, Ann H. Ross

First published: 23 September 2015Full publication history

DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.22869

Japan creates Biometric Payment System for travelers with eye towards 2020 Olympics

Japan has created a biometric – fingerprint authenticated – payment system for tourists, partly in preparation for the large increase in visitors expected for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Starting in July, tourists have been able to register their credit card information and fingerprint scans in airports and convenient public locations. This system allows shoppers and diners to pay for good and services quickly and easily.

With the new biometric payment system, travelers make payments with two fingerprints placed on a reading device. Any taxes are automatically deducted. The data will help Japan develop “effective tourism management policies.” Japan is hoping to see the rate of tourism grow to an expected 40 million annual visitors in 2020 with the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

The marketing data will be collected and anonymously saved and analyzed by a “government-led consultative body.”

Privacy and security concerns are always important. Currently participation in the system in not required. For additional security, the system may be refined to include a password as well as fingerprints.


Tourists in Japan to use fingerprints as 'currency' instead of cash

Danielle Demetriou for The Telegraph, Tokyo, April 11, 2016

Japan spearheads biometric payment system to spur inbound tourism

Global Blue Corporate online article Friday, 13 May, 2016