Face it: Zoloz tech lets you to pay with a smile

With a recently revealed new brand and broader strategic focus, Kansas City-based Zoloz is expanding its biometrics security offerings to include another unique human attribute: a user’s face.

Formerly known as EyeVerify, Zoloz unveiled three new products — Zoloz Connect, Real ID and Smile — that CEO Toby Rush said will ensure trust and security for millions of people who conduct important transactions online. The products are an extension of EyeVerify’s original security offering — the EyePrint ID, which verified identity by scanning a user’s eyes — but will also employ facial recognition and optical character recognition technology.

As more security breaches make headlines, Rush said, the company aims to make trust and verification easier for users across the globe.

“Each day, we are asked the question, ‘Who are you?’ digitally, and we’ll be asked this question multiple times a day for the rest of our lives,” Rush wrote. “We are also now using more complex and sophisticated devices and services than ever before, like mobile banking and payments, that makes it more challenging to secure our sensitive information online.

“Our platform helps solve this challenge and answers this question, in all scenarios, regardless of the type of technology, in a way that gives people maximum privacy and control. We are on a mission to make it simple to be known, trusted and safe in the digital world.”

Here’s more on each of the products.

• Zoloz Real ID — combines biometrics security technology, “spoof detection” and optical character recognition. Biometric security analyzes the unique characteristics of a person, such as one’s voice, iris or fingerprints. Spoof detection — also called “liveness” — entails a user responding to a challenge, such as blinking on cue, which is an action impossible for a static image a fraud might use. Optical character recognition transforms a picture of an ID card into text that can be compared against a database for name and identity verification.  

• Zoloz Connect — allows users to create cloud-based digital identities that can be used across apps, eliminating the need for passwords. To verify identify, it taps the Zoloz Real ID, combining biometrics, “spoof detection” and optical character recognition.

• Zoloz Smile — allows businesses to verify customers’ identity with a smiling facial scan and phone number. Zoloz Smile uses the camera in a machine such as a kiosk, vending machine, monitor, ATM or another device, to scan the customer’s face and match it against an existing profile. It combines facial recognition with anti-spoof technology to provide biometric authentication.

The tools will first be made available in China, the headquarters of Zoloz’s parent organization, Ant Financial. The rollout strategy hopes to meet the growing market demand for trusted identity solutions in China where more than 200 million people use Zoloz’s technology, Rush said.

In September 2016, Ant Financial — the payments affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding — purchased EyeVerify for more than $100 million. The deal is one of Kansas City’s most notable exits in the past decade.

Founded in 2012 as EyeVerify, Zoloz has more than doubled its staff headcount in the past year. The firm now has more than 120 employees across its Kansas City, San Francisco, Beijing and Singapore offices.

To learn more about Zoloz’s new strategy and products, check out the video below.