Latin America biometrics and digital ID landscape
I decided to move to another part of the world and put together a list of identity management, biometrics and verification trends and projects in Latin America worth keeping an eye on. The continent, despite its tight integration in the global economic trade relations (total global export/import of the Latin American region has gone up to nearly $2.5 trillion — see more in this impressive report from ECLAC), remains fairly closed in terms of startups and tech venture environment.
Some of this can be related to language and cultural barriers. Spanish and Portuguese languages dominate in the region, and it is well known by people in the tech universe that local consumers and communities tend to support national language-run projects and groups, and rarely get involved in international movements. Some effect comes with government protection measures, and you can’t completely discount remoteness of the area as well. It is hard to weight each factor but the result is clear: LatAm remains reasonably “on the inside”. This example may look too hard but as I write this, of total 25,000 people infected with the Wuhan coronavirus none reside in any Latin America country.
To get started with something, here is a comprehensive “Investment Opportunities for Biometrics in Latin America (2020–2025)” report from Mordor Intelligence which sums up the situation as follows:
Latin America is one of the fastest growing regions in global biometrics market with countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina contributing majorly for the growth of the market. Brazil accounted a major share on the whole Latin America’s biometrics market. Government spending, increasing security spending, cybercrimes and deployment of face recognition scanners across borders and airports of countries, are the factors that are making the biometrics technology grow lucratively in Latin America.
Mexico is expected to grow with more number of projects such as national ID, voter ID, e-passports, e-driver’s license, and ID cards based on biometrics. Mexico is one of the key countries in global biometrics market, which is utilizing fingerprint, face and IRIS based biometric systems in its national ID project. Mexico and Argentina are developing their own biometric national ID systems to avoid identity fraud. Biometric identification system can help facilitate advancements in social, political, and economic development.
Demand for biometrics access control systems is expected to increase in the next two years. Brazil biometrics market is emerging as one of the fastest growing biometrics markets in Latin America. Sporting of international events such as FIFA World Cup 2014 and Olympics 2016, escalating private investments, rising security concerns and increasing government security spending, are the factors driving the growth of biometrics in Brazilian market. With the increase in the demand for these devices, more number of local manufacturers would want to step up their presence in the market.
In November, 2019, Innovatrics, a notable player in the market, said that the biometric landscape in Latin America is expanding and evolving, with 30 million people enrolled in the region, public sector opportunities on the rise, and increasing demand in the banking industry for multimodal biometric systems.
Blockchain-based project add significantly to the process: last April, a study compiling and publicizing the initiatives on decentralized digital identity that are being conducted in Latin American countries, was presented by Blockchain Iberoamerica Alliance, Blockchain Spain, and the organization of self-sovereign digital identity SSIMeetup. As I noted earlier, language is of great importance: the document is available in Spanish only…
Regarding the activity related to self-sovereign identity (SSI), Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico are said to be the countries in Latin America with the largest number of cases of decentralized digital identity. In the specific case of Brazil, three important projects are mentioned: Identity Tech, BlockIoT and eID +. These are initiatives that offer DLT services in the field of digital identity, both within the public and private sectors.
Argentina has initiatives such as the DIDI project, led by the Bitcoin Argentina Foundation and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, in Colombia an outstanding effort has been made by the IDEMA to digitize the National Civil Registration and Identification processes since 2017. In Mexico, the “Tecnológico de Monterrey” initiative is introduced, which develops a case of decentralized digital identity use in education.
In the Iberian Peninsula, the variety of solutions that advance in Spain are shown, led by Alastria ID, as well as other constructions on public blockchain platform, such as Ethereum. Services are added on identity platforms, research projects with public financing and use cases in educational institutions.
To wrap this up, a region that generates 7.3% of the world GDP and is a home to 8.4% of the planet’s population can’t be ignored by any international initiative, WDIA not being an exception. We intend to set a footprint on the continent and provide full coverage of our activities for Latin America countries.
About the author
Yury Myshinskiy is a President with the Worldwide Digital Identification Association in Geneva, Switzerland, ID & KYC/AML adherent and a tech expert with many years of relevant experience in the field.
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