WHO WE ARE? FacePhi is a company founded in 2006 specialized in the development and commercialization of advanced Face Recognition Software solutions. FacePhi´s headquarters are based in Alicante (Spain), while the company operates internationally through branch offices in Europe, Latin America and the US. Currently the company has a team of 16 highly skilled professionals, with a balance between engineers, software developers and business managers. Thanks to our multidisciplinary team, we have been able to increase our international presence in the young but rapidly growing market of face recognition (facial biometrics). The key of our success is the uniqueness of our 100% proprietary technology for facial recognition, based on our own-developed algorithms (technology registered and protected by industrial secret, with no possibility for reverse engineering).
THE FACCESS PROJECT: In the FACCESS project we aim at performing a pilot study for the large-scale implementation of our face recognition technology in banking security. There is a strong demand in the banking industry for secure biometric applications. In fact, in May 2014 the European Central Bank (ECB) published a list of recommendations for increased bank transaction security and for the first time, biometrics was included as one of the most valid and most secure authentication parameters. Security has always been a major concern of the banking industry, fundamentally because banks are attractive to criminals as a direct access to currency, bank notes, and user‘s personal information which can be used for identity theft (phishing and card skimming). The concerns about bank security have always been there, but it has been after the breakthrough of online and mobile banking when bank fraud has become major issue to address with urgency. Currently, whether it’s online, on a smartphone, on an ATM or on a POS (point-of-sale), the great majority of banking transactions are done by using a 4-6 digits PIN code as the way for authentication. This form of authentication is of an extremely low security level in all cases, but especially more in online banking where cybercriminals and hackers can easily obtain this PIN code in a matter of seconds. As a result, the total value of fraudulent transactions is rapidly increasing year by year, being now estimated at €1.44 billion solely in Europe. In this scenario, biometrics holds great promise to become the gold standard authentication method for bank transactions in the near future. Instead of a PIN code, which is something you should remember and that can be easily obtained by criminals, biometric authentication is based on those distinctive and measurable characteristics that can be used to unequivocally authenticate a person (facial features, iris pattern, fingerprint, voice…); thus making the identity fraud impossible. However, despite the clear opportunity there are still some barriers preventing the banking biometrics breakthrough, at least on a large scale. Our Facial recognition technology gathers the ideal features to overcome these barriers, so thus representing a great opportunity to bring definitively biometric authentication to banking security.
FACCESS: Objectives of the action
The ultimate objective we sought for the FACCESS project during Phase 1 was to minimize any potential risk that could endanger the success of our business innovation project from all perspectives: technical, commercial and financial perspectives. With this ultimate objective in mind, the Phase 1 was designed as a feasibility study aimed at determining those key aspects for the successful implementation of our facial recognition technology in banking security on a large scale. Therefore, the phase 1 objectives were set up upon a thorough analysis of the potential risks we might encounter and as a way to mitigate them since the very beginning. Considering this, the specific objectives for the action were as follows:
OBJECTIVES OF THE COMMERCIAL FEASIBILITY ASSESSMENT:
To collect information on the current state of biometric deployment in banking security.
To analyse the major European players and stakeholders in the biometric field.
To identify the major challenges for banking biometric deployment in Europe: user experience is a major issue we should address by engaging the final users in the project since the beginning and by testing the end-user experience.
OBJECTIVES OF THE TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY ASSESSMENT:
To engage a large European bank institution (testing with >500.000 users) for the large-scale pilot study.
To define the roadmap for achieving the FIDO certification (current international standard that defines the highest security level for user identification).
To design the pilot study according to the strictest technical and security standards defined by ISO standards in biometrics and FIDO certification.
OBJECTIVES OF THE FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY ASSESSMENT:
To thoroughly calculate the total investment requirements and the future investment needs to complete our FACCESS business plan.
To update our financial projections for a 3 years business plan.
To elaborate an updated business plan with the updated financial data.
