• Ingenico partnered with Fujitsu Frontech to authenticate customer identities and facilitate transactions using the palm of the customer’s hand for in-person transactions.
• To make a payment, customers hover their hand over a near-infrared sensor, which reads their palm veins to authenticate their identity and complete the payment using stored card credentials.
• The unique pattern of veins in the palm is difficult for fraudsters to hack because the patterns under the skin are challenging to replicate.

Ingenico has partnered with Fujitsu Frontech to authenticate customer identities and facilitate payment using the palm of their hand for in-person transactions.

Leveraging its subsidiary Fulcrum Biometrics, Fujitsu Frontech’s solution uses palm vein identification to enable consumers to identify themselves and authenticate their payments by moving their hand over a near-infrared sensor on Ingenico’s AXIUM range, the company’s Android payment terminal. The technology creates a more convenient experience for customers as it eliminates the need to take out a credit card or enter a PIN. All they need to do is hover the palm of their hand over the sensor.

The palm payment service requires pre-authentication. To enroll a new customer, the merchant takes a near-infrared scan of the customer’s palm using an Ingenico device that incorporates the Fujitsu PalmSecure-F Pro Sensor and software. The image of the palm is encrypted, tokenized, and linked to the customer’s payment card in Ingenico’s secure cloud environment.

“Palm vein biometrics is the most secure method for identifying customers and authenticating payments, said Ingenico Senior Executive Vice President of Global Solutions Michel Léger. “Palm vein identification is a much faster way of making payments than traditional chip and pin and offers several tangible advantages, with none of the security risks of other biometric methods.”

The authentication method leverages Fujitsu’s PalmSecure technology and combines it with Fulcrum Biometrics’ biometric identification solutions to use the unique pattern of veins in the palm of a user’s hand. Palm vein identification is fast, accurate, contactless, and less intrusive than fingerprint or facial recognition. Additionally, when compared to facial recognition and fingerprint biometric methods, palm veins are more difficult for fraudsters to hack because the unique patterns under the skin are challenging to replicate.

“Our palm vein technology provides the most advanced consumer protection available in any biometric modality,” said Fujitsu Frontech North America President and CEO Shuhei Oyake. “Your palm vein pattern is totally internal to your body and therefore cannot be captured without your knowledge. Our patented technology for matching palm vein templates without needing to decrypt them means that there is never a time when your unencrypted biometric could be compromised. Fujitsu Frontech North America and Ingenico together will deliver merchants and consumers a long-awaited solution for frictionless and secure payments.”

Ingenico, a branch of Worldline, was founded in 1980 and is based in France. The company offers payment services including point of sale, online payments, issuing and acquiring solutions, and digital banking tools. Earlier this week, Ingenico partnered with Klarna to make the BNPL company’s flexible payment options available at the physical point of sale. Ingenico works with more than 1,000 banks and acquirers, is active in 37 countries, and facilitates payments on more than 2,500 mobile apps.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

• Payroll and compliance company Deel is acquiring digital governance platform Capbase.
• Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
• Deel will leverage Capbase’s expertise to launch a new product dedicated to equity management and issuance.

It has been a week of consolidation in the capitalization table management space. Fidelity announced plans to acquire Shoobx this week, and payroll and compliance company Deel recently unveiled that it is acquiring digital governance platform Capbase.

Deel, which launched as a payroll and compliance platform for international employees and contractors, has acquired one of the biggest players in the capitalization table management arena, Capbase. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Deel will leverage Capbase’s expertise to launch equity management and issuance services that can help businesses operating with legal and tax questions such as taxable events, local laws, required reporting, and more– across 90 different geographic regions.

“We looked at U.S. compliance and realized it was a very, very hard thing to do,” Deel Co-founder Alex Bouaziz told TechCrunch in an interview. “Equity is such an important part of companies, so enabling other companies to grant it across geographies and at scale felt like something we should tackle.”

Capbase was founded in 2018 to help startups manage the complexities of securities transactions. The company’s services range from helping companies with incorporation, setting up their board, purchasing shares, managing their capitalization table, finding funding, and facilitating due diligence for potential investors and buyers. Capbase has raised a total of $6 million in funding.

After the deal closes, Capbase will continue with business as usual, but Deel will leverage the company’s expertise to launch a new product dedicated to equity management and issuance. All of Capbase’s 20 employees will join the Deel team.

San Francisco-based Deel was founded in 2018 and enables companies to hire employees across the globe and pay them in more than 150 currencies. The company was valued at $12 billion last May and has raised a total of $680 million in funding. Deel has made a total of five acquisitions, including this week’s Capbase buy. Deel’s previous acquisitions have focused on payroll, HR, and work visa management.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

• Robinhood announced that its Robinhood Retirement offering was now available to all eligible customers.
• The company, which offered a waitlist for interested customers in December, said that more than one million people have signed up for the new investment service.
• Robinhood will provide a 1% match for every eligible dollar customers contribute to their Robinhood Retirement plan.

Robinhood, which gained notoriety in recent years as a platform for traders of meme stocks like AMC and Gamestop, announced this week that it is making its Robinhood Retirement offering available to all eligible customers. Unveiled via waitlist in December, the new IRA product offers a 1% match for every eligible dollar contributed – the first and only individual retirement account to do so, according to Robinhood.

Baiju Bhatt, company co-founder and Chief Creative Officer said in a statement: “Systems are failing to catch up to the needs of how many people live and save (or don’t) … We see an opportunity to be a part of the solution, to build products that adapt to the way work and savings will evolve, and ensure people have the tools to control their financial future – just like the way we started.”

Robinhood claims that more than one million people have signed up for the new service via the company’s waitlist. A significant number of these individuals, according to Robinhood, are freelancers and members of the so-called “gig economy,” who often struggle to find solutions to help them prepare for retirement. Robinhood Retirement will enable customers to open multiple Robinhood brokerage accounts and earn a 1% match from Robinhood on eligible contribution dollars. Customers will be able to grow their earnings in tax-free or tax-deferred accounts, and can invest in both stocks and ETFs. The product’s Portfolio Builder feature helps customers build their own investment portfolio, use a custom recommended portfolio, or a combination of both – all without having to pay a commission. Robinhood added that the company plans to authorize options trading in retirement accounts as well – also with no commission or per-contract fees.

“In 2023, Robinhood remains a company fundamentally focused on the unmet needs of the next generations,” Bhatt noted in a blog post announcing the availability of Robinhood Retirement. “No matter how income is earned, we believe the impact of providing long term savings incentives are just as powerful today as they were for our parents’ generation.”

Founded in 2013 by Bhatt and Vlad Tenev, Robinhood offers commission-free trading of stocks, exchange-traded funds, and cryptocurrencies. With total assets of more than $19.7 billion and revenues of $1.8 billion – both as of 2021 – Robinhood boasts more than 22 million funded accounts and nearly 16 million monthly average users as of the spring of 2022. Robinhood is a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the ticker HOOD. The firm has a market capitalization of $7.8 billion.

Photo by ANTONI SHKRABA