Finger prints are the de facto means of biometric verification in South Africa used for the population register, criminal bureau and driving licence register, but not only are there several international standards relating to finger print identification and the suppliers of Automated Finger Print Identification Systems (AFIS) have their proprietary algorithms and templates too.

Furthermore, the physical limitations of finger prints, such as increased wear and tear as a result of manual labour, increased smoothness for older persons and intentional rubbing of fingers on a coarse surface by persons in an attempt not to be identified from their fingerprints, introduce higher failure rates of false positives (incorrectly declaring a match) and false negatives (incorrectly declaring a mismatch).

Hence, consideration should be given to record a secondary biometric to supplement the finger print biometric. Given the high resolution portrait images that are currently captured by most cameras, adding facial recognition may not need the recapturing of a second biometric. In the case of high security applications, consideration should be given to record an iris biometric, which offers the best biometric matching results in terms of false positives and false negatives.

Magna offers a complete and configurable Biometric System which could be used for the enrolment of drivers, citizens, voters and other secure applications. The system comprises of the following processes:

• Interface with the system performing the administrative vetting before authorising the production of the card
• Personalisation of the card, including the printing of the human readable data, portrait image of the card holder, signature of the card holder and 2D barcode (if any)
• Personalisation of the integrated circuit (contact or contactless), if any
• Quality assurance of the personalisation, including a matching of the human and machine readable data
• Quality assurance of the card construction, including the security features and overlays that may have been performed after personalisation
• Management Information, including several reports and a dashboard

Clients may choose the particular composition of the card, including the nature of the security features, machine readable property and physical card material from a wide range of options available to suite their individual needs.