Company News

HID Global Acquires Omni-ID to Extend RFID Capabilities

HID Global, a worldwide provider of trusted identity solutions, has announced the acquisition of Omni-ID, a manufacturer of RFID tags and industrial IoT hardware devices for passive and active tagging, tracking, monitoring and alerting applications. The acquisition extends HID’s market presence in RFID technology and strengthens its activities in India and China.

‘I am very pleased to welcome Omni-ID into the ASSA ABLOY Group and HID,’ said Björn Lidefelt, EVP and Head of HID Global. ‘Omni-ID is a strategic technological addition to HID and reinforces our current RFID and IoT offering. Expanding our sales and manufacturing footprint in India and in China with Omni-ID will further enhance HID’s ability to serve customers locally, while extending our industrial IoT technology into emerging markets.’

Omni-ID provides passive, rugged longrange RAIN (RAdio Frequency IdentificatioN) RFID ultra-high frequency (UHF) tags and labels in several form factors for an array of identification requirements. The company focuses on organisations in the industrial, oil and gas, transportation and other markets seeking rugged UHF RFID solutions for use in challenging environmental conditions (high temperature, wind, dirt, explosive and other difficult scenarios).

Additionally, Omni-ID brings passive UHF temperature sensing to the HID identification technologies portfolio and fortifies HID’s expertise and capabilities in custom RFID design and personalisation.

Active tags and solutions from Omni-ID are implemented with embedded technologies and protocols such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network), GPS (Global Positioning System), Quuppa and Wirepas, which complement the HID Location Services offerings.

‘The acquisition of Omni-ID supports HID’s Identification Technologies business strategy to power trusted identities by optimising our portfolio with a broader range of value-added RAIN RFID UHF components, active identification devices and more ways to deliver highly customised, feature-rich solutions to customers,’ said Marc Bielmann, SVP and Head of Identification Technologies with HID Global.

authID.ai Announces Closing of Public Offering

authID.ai, the biometric identity authentication solutions company, has announced the closing of its public offering of 1,642,856 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $7 per share, including 214,285 shares sold upon full exercise of the underwriter’s option to purchase additional shares, for gross proceeds of approximately $11.5 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and offering expenses.

The common shares began trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol ‘AUID’ on 24 August 2021.

The company intends to use the proceeds to invest in software product and platform development and artificial intelligence; to expand the its business development and sales and marketing capabilities; and for working capital and general corporate purposes.

According to authID.ai, its mission is to eliminate all passwords, and to be the preferred global platform for biometric identity authentication. The authID.ai ‘Identity as a Service’ (IDaaS) platform delivers a suite of biometric identity proofing and authentication solutions. Its vision is to enable every organisation to ‘Recognise Your Customer’ instantly, without friction or loss of privacy, powered by biometric and artificial intelligence technologies.

AnaCap Invests in WebID

AnaCap Financial Partners, a specialist midmarket private equity investor in technology enabled financial services, has made a majority investment in WebID, a German digital identification provider.

AnaCap will provide significant growth capital and partner with the founders and existing management team to extend WebID’s product offering to other industries outside of the core financial services and telecoms space, where it has a strong market position. These include eGovernment, eHealth, eCommerce and eMobility. The investment will also support inorganic growth through future acquisitions.

WebID provides a range of digital identification solutions for Know Your Customer (KYC) purposes, such as identification via video call, online banking, artificial intelligence. They also include qualified electronic signature (QES) solutions for eSigning to leading financial institutions and large corporates across Germany, via its modular IT platform, Global Trust Technology Platform (GTTP).

WebID is an enabler of the increasingly important offline-to-online channel shift being witnessed globally and holds several patents across Europe, US and China. The company identifies over 15,000 users per day with Video Ident and has collected and stored over 8 million verified identities.

WebID was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Berlin; other main sites are Hamburg, Kiel, and Solingen. It has ~300 customers, including a blue-chip roster of large corporates and financial institutions. WebID is a pioneer of Bafin-approved, AML-compliant video identification solutions.

Currently, major lenders such as Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas and Santander are established core clients and rely on WebID’s KYC solutions to boost their online channel activities.

Coinbase Sends Erroneous ID Security Notifications to Customers

Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, acknowledged that it erroneously advised about 125,000 customers that their security settings had changed.

The company, which is publicly traded on Nasdaq, said that it was the result of an internal error.

The incident comes in the wake of a previous story that detailed widespread complaints from Coinbase customers whose accounts were hacked and then could not reach anyone from the company to help. Coinbase said then it was improving its customer service by rolling out voice support this month for customers whose accounts had been taken over by a third party, and live chat later this year.

The security-settings email sent to customers reads: ‘Your 2-step verification settings have been changed.’ This prompted confusion and alarm among investors who thought their account had been hacked.

Coinbase then sent a second email that the notification was ‘sent in error.’ The company said in a tweet it ‘experienced a notification delivery issue that sent SMS text messages and email notifications alerting customers that their account 2FA settings were changed.’

The issue was the result of an internal error and not a hack, said a company spokesperson. ‘All of a sudden, the system just started sending stuff like a bug in the system, but it was not a malicious or third-party error.’