Biometrics IS the financial sector

“Have to update my chart again.”

C. Maxine Most of Acuity Market Intelligence. From https://twitter.com/cmaxmost/status/1418306725510193152

Since I’m treading into financial territory here, I should disclose that Bredemarket has financial relationships with one or more of the companies mentioned in this post. This is not investment advice, do your own due diligence, bla bla bla.

I don’t monitor the market enough to know if this is part of an overall trend, but there has been a lot of biometric and digital identity investment recently. Both Biometric Update and FindBiometrics (and other publications such as FinLedger) have written about some of these recent investments, and IPVM has published its acquisition analysis (for subscribers only). Here’s a partial list of the biometric and/or digital identity companies who have received new funding (via investors, IPO, or acquisitions) recently:

• Anyvision.
• CLEAR.
• Clearview AI.
• ID.me.
• Jumio.
• Keyless.
• LoginID.
• Paravision AI.
• Rekor.
• Socure.
• Trulioo.
• Watchguard, Inc.

I am not a financial expert (trust me on this), but I suspect that these companies are benefiting from two contradictory factors.

• The apparent WANING of the COVID threat suggests better market performance in the future.
• Some biometric and digital identity investments are very attractive precisely BECAUSE of the COVID threat, and the resulting attractiveness of remote and touchless technologies.

Of course, markets run in cycles, and it’s hard to predict if this is just the beginning of money flowing to biometrics/digital identity companies, or if all of this will suddenly come to a grinding halt. Remember how hot so-called “fever scanners” were a year ago, until their deficiencies were identified? And remember how Microsoft was prompted to divest from Anyvision not too long ago?

It’s possible that a number of external factors, such as an increase in government bans of facial recognition use, consumer resistance to digital identity, or the entry (or re-entry) of much larger players into the biometrics and/or digital identity markets, could dampen the revenue hopes for these funded companies.

Of course, investors are used to analyzing risk, and in many cases the investments with higher risk can yield the greater rewards.

It’s all just a game.