Company News

De La Rue Extends Australian Passport Contract

De La Rue plc has announced that it has entered into a five- year extension of its contract with Note Printing Australia (NPA) for the sole-source supply of polycarbonate data pages for Australian passports.

The contract originally went live in February 2022 and had a five- year duration; it has now been extended to 2032. The agreement will result in De La Rue investing further to expand production at its Malta facility to meet increased volume demand, with the additional investment being covered by incremental cash flows. The expanded capacity is expected to be in place around the beginning of financial year 2023/24.

Clive Vacher, CEO of De La Rue said: ‘we are grateful to Note Printing Australia for their confidence to extend our relationship to a full decade. This extension helps to underpin management’s confidence in the company’s long-term outlook for the division. We are already in the process of delivering highly secure and durable polycarbonate data pages for the Australian passport programme, and we will ramp up this production further in the coming months.’ 

‘The additional investment will enable us to satisfy further demand and is incremental to the previously announced expansion of our Authentication and Currency factory in Malta,’ he continued. ‘We look forward to many more years of continued collaboration with NPA.’

Telpo Integrates Elyctis ID Readers into Biometric Terminal

Telpo, a China-based smart terminal and solution provider, plans to integrate Elyctis ID readers into its latest biometric tablet, that has already been rolled out for a wide-scale national election program.

Founded in 1999, Telpo has more than 20 years of hardware manufacturing experience. With a team of more than 200 engineers, Telpo has obtained 300 technology patents and honours, and nearly 400 product certificates.

According to Telpo, its S8 biometric tablet provides all the required functionalities for use in a variety of ID applications, such as citizen ID registration, border control, elections and criminal identification. After an extensive benchmarking process, Telpo decided to integrate Elyctis ID BOX One OEM 021, to provide the MRZ reading, OCR analysis and contactless reading functions.

Elyctis readers ensure that all MRZs can be read even under difficult light conditions. In addition, the readers are able to read the contactless data from an ID document including all types of electronic passports and ID cards, a feat that cannot be achieved with a simple low end RFID reader.

Telpo has already delivered thousands of S8 biometric tablets integrating Elyctis ID BOX One OEM 021, for a large-scale national elections project. Under this project, the terminal is used as the core of the voter identification and authentication process for the election. Voters’ fingerprints are read by a Telpo S8 terminal, and the fingerprint data are checked against the existing electoral roll. In addition, the voter ID card or ePassport can be read to verify the identity of the person. The document’s MRZ is read and analysed, and the digital content of the ID document’s chip is read to complete the verification of the voter’s identification.

Scytáles Goes Mobile with Updated Products

Swedish mobile ID developer, Scytáles, has undertaken an update of its product portfolio to align with the shifting requirements of regulations and standards relating to Mobile Driving Licences (mDL) and other Mobile IDs (mID), which can offer convenience and an instant alternative to physical plastic IDs while establishing the foundation for a wide array of online digital services.

According to Scytáles, its ISO mDL/mID allows organisations across a multitude of sectors – including education, enterprise, retail and finance – as well as public institutions to issue high- assurance digital identification. Authentication is instant, and the security specifications of stored identities are configurable to meet ICAO, ISO, AAMVA and eIDAS interoperability standards, thus laying the foundation for a wide range of online identity- based services.

Identity providers will enable the Scytáles ISO mDL/mID App to be installed on citizens’ mobile devices to leverage high-assurance PKI technology in order to deliver security assurances comparable to that provided by high-security chip cards, while enabling authentication capabilities across relying parties.

Scytáles’ ISO Mobile Validator App gives relying parties the ability to inspect and verify a mobile ID for instant validation and authentication with the identity provider. It is enhanced with an automated process that can be performed on a wide variety of devices, from eGates and workstation terminals to standard NFC and Bluetooth enabled smartphones and tablets.

The Scytáles ISO mDL/mID App provides ICAO, ISO and AAMVA identity security specifications, which results in PKI security services including integrity, authentication, non-repudiation and interoperability.

Service manager ecosystem (© Scytáles).

According to Scytáles, its updated product portfolio creates a new approach to mobile ID verification that provides similar assurances and security as that provided by chip cards, while enabling cross-jurisdiction reading capabilities.

Apple Headset May Feature Iris Scanner

The forthcoming Apple mixed reality headset is rumoured to include an iris scanner, which would be used to authenticate payments and allow the headset to seamlessly switch between user accounts.

According to reports in several technology media outlets, users will be able to scan their irises to quickly log into their accounts, make payments and allow multiple people to use the same headset.

To enable iris scanning, internal cameras track where users are looking. Eye tracking also allows Apple to reduce graphical fidelity in a user’s peripheral vision, thereby reducing the amount of processing power required for the headset’s graphics.

Apple’s purchase of German startup SensoMotoric Instruments in 2017 is said to have allowed it to build the technology. The reports also repeat the prediction that Apple’s headset will feature 14 cameras, designed to capture motion to accurately represent real- world movements on digital avatars.