Touchless by Design: The Rise of Contactless Biometrics

Across banking, healthcare, and government, organizations are embracing contactless biometrics for faster, safer, and more convenient authentication. The touch-free revolution is reshaping how we prove who we are.

By: Mirza Bahic
E-mail: mirza.bahic@asmideast.com

The pandemic put contactless biometrics in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, but it turned out to be exactly the right technology at the right time. This technology didn’t just solve a temporary problem: it proved it was the future of identity verification. Today, organizations aren’t choosing touchless solutions because they’re worried about germs. They’re choosing them because they work better.

Thus, in this article, we’ll track the remarkable rise of contactless biometrics, from pandemic necessity to technological standard. We’ll explore how this shift transformed not just our approach to security, but our entire understanding of what contactless identity verification can look like in the modern world.

The global market for contactless biometrics is projected to nearly triple to USD 46.65 billion by 2030

Rapid Expansion Across the MEA Region

To start, some key numbers highlight the sector’s expansion. Valued at USD 17.55 billion in 2024, the global market for contactless biometrics is projected to nearly triple to USD 46.65 billion by 2030, reflecting a strong annual growth rate of around 17 percent. In the Middle East, this sector is experiencing strong momentum as well, driven by strategic investments.

Across the broader Middle East & Africa (MEA) region, forecasts from Consainsights anticipate growth from USD 1.06 billion in 2023 to USD 4.68 billion by 2033. According to Grand View Research, the UAE market alone generated USD 407.2 million in 2024, projected to climb to USD 1,195.1 million by 2030. It is worth noting that the larger MEA region accounted for about 7 % of global contactless biometrics revenue in 2024. Adoption is being accelerated by government-led initiatives, particularly in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, with the focus on border security, airports, and digital ID systems.

How Biometric Companies Adapt Locally

While contactless biometrics adoption is a global phenomenon, regional strategies and local market understanding have proven crucial for sustainable growth. Suprema is one of the companies active in the regional market whose expansion in the Middle East demonstrates how strategic positioning can accelerate the adoption of this technology.

When Suprema launched its Middle East subsidiary, the company’s initial distribution-only model limited market penetration. Since then, the company has made significant strides.

“We had conducted a complete market gap analysis and the areas of improvement with an action plan, which was the beginning of Suprema Middle East’s success story,” explains Mohamed Shenawy, Managing Director at Suprema Middle East. The results followed suit. “The sales revenue has grown by 300% in seven years,” adds Shenawy. Based on these results, Suprema decided to expand, adding Africa, Turkey, and CIS countries to the original Middle East coverage. At the same time, Suprema has emphasized cloud-first innovation as a key driver of growth alongside growing its regional coverage. This approach represents a shift away from traditional server-dependent access control systems. Today, Suprema’s solutions span diverse sectors, with a strong presence in government ministries, oil & gas, education, healthcare, banking, data centers, plants, and transportation hubs.

Other companies have also moved quickly to anticipate and address the shift toward contactless solutions in the region, each leveraging its unique strengths and technological heritage.

IDEMIA has positioned itself as a provider across the broad spectrum of modalities, including face, iris, and fingerprint analysis for both physical access and digital authentication. Their flagship MorphoWave solution exemplifies this comprehensive strategy, allowing users to scan and verify up to four fingerprints simultaneously in less than a second with a simple wave of the hand. The portfolio extends further with VisionPass for facial recognition and OneLook for iris solutions.

NEC is yet another company that has concentrated on strengthening its portfolio, with a focus on creating frictionless operational experiences while improving accuracy, speed, and resilience across diverse environments. These go from indoor offices all the way to large, dynamic public areas such as airports and smart city deployments. By embedding contactless authentication solutions across multiple domains, NEC aims to actively help organizations transition away from traditional card-based or PIN-dependent access methods.

ZKTeco has pursued an intensive investment strategy in both facial and palm recognition technologies, backed by substantial research and development resources. Their portfolio includes the SpeedFace, ProFaceX, and ProMA series, complemented by Armatura’s OmniAC30 multimodal terminals that integrate facial and palm recognition capabilities. Their palm recognition systems use advanced imaging to read multiple features of the hand, including prints, veins, and shape. This approach delivers robust anti-spoofing protection with false acceptance rates below 0.00001% and false rejection rates under 0.001%, demonstrating how technical innovation drives market confidence in contactless solutions.

Multimodal Biometric Evolution

Multimodal solutions have also drawn the attention of Iris ID, a company that has built upon its decades-long legacy in iris recognition. Their approach combines what Mohammed Murad, Chief Revenue Officer at Iris ID Systems, describes as “the most accurate biometric, iris, without the most convenient one, face.” This helped them create solutions that leverage the strengths of both modalities. Recent innovations from Iris ID include hardware and software solutions that facilitate efficient immigration and border crossings, access control for critical infrastructures, and workplace management solutions that keep law enforcement officers safe while on duty. This development trend shows how companies can extend their core competencies to address emerging security challenges.

The Rise of Facial, Iris, and Palm Recognition

While multiple biometric modalities are advancing rapidly, certain technologies are clearly emerging as market favorites. These are driven by their technical capabilities, user acceptance, and adaptability across diverse deployment scenarios.

Facial recognition stands out as the most widely adopted contactless modality across virtually all types of deployments. “Facial recognition, delivered through our VisionPass solution, is seeing especially rapid growth,” explains Virginie Flam, SVP & Global Head of Smart Biometrics at IDEMIA Public Security, noting that their algorithms ranked first in the latest NIST FRTE evaluations.

The appeal of facial recognition extends beyond pure technical performance to encompass practical deployment considerations that are crucial for real-world implementations. As Flam notes, the ability to enroll remotely via smartphone makes this modality highly adaptable, which, in turn, creates deployment flexibility that drives adoption across diverse applications. These range from event ticketing to residential access control and even payment systems.

Facial recognition stands out as the most widely adopted contactless modality across virtually all types of deployments.

NEC strives to reinforce this trend, particularly in the specific market segments. “Among contactless biometric modalities, facial recognition and iris recognition are currently gaining the most traction, particularly in high-traffic, security-sensitive environments”, the company states.

Other biometric modalities are also successfully carving out significant market niches based on their unique technical strengths and specific application advantages. For Iris ID, iris recognition remains central to their value proposition, particularly when strategically combined with facial recognition in multimodal deployments. “Iris is known for high accuracy and is less prone to false acceptance and less vulnerable to spoofing as compared to facial recognition,” explains Murad. While acknowledging that face recognition is better known and convenient for first-time enrollments, Murad believes that “fusion solutions will continue to gain momentum” as organizations seek to balance convenience with security requirements.

Palm recognition is also emerging as a particularly robust alternative for high-security applications where compromising on accuracy or spoofing resistance is not acceptable. According to Junais Ibrahim, Manager for Integrated Security Solutions at ZKTeco Middle East, the technical advantages of palm recognition extend beyond mere accuracy statistics. His company’s technology in this field relies on near-infrared illumination to capture subsurface vascular patterns. This creates biometric templates that are inherently more difficult to spoof compared to surface-based modalities. In this manner, the multi-modal approach based on combining palm-print topography with palm-vein vascular mapping provides multiple layers of verification within a single interaction.

Yet, just as palm recognition leverages multi-layered verification for critical scenarios, facial recognition technologies are evolving with similar anti-spoofing sophistication to meet diverse requirements.

Suprema, for instance, has prioritized facial recognition devices with advanced anti-spoofing capabilities while maintaining the flexibility needed to address varying regional preferences. The company’s BioStation 3 has been described as their “best revenue-generating product” in the region. It incorporates both infrared and RGB cameras in a dual-sensor approach that ensures accurate authentication. This is enhanced by Suprema’s AI algorithms developed by their in-house team, which undergo testing and training using various challenge models, including printed photos and video captures.

The purpose of the BioStar Air was to move away from server-based, card-dependent infrastructure toward more flexible, scalable deployment models.

One of its more recent products is BioStar Air, which was launched in 2025 as a fully cloud-based, mobile-first platform. The aim was to move away from server-based, card-dependent infrastructure toward more flexible, scalable deployment models. This platform represents the convergence of advanced biometric technology with the existing cloud architecture, enabling organizations to implement sophisticated access control without traditional infrastructure investments.

Regional Adoption Trends Fueled by Security, User Experience, and Regulation

These capabilities not only reflect technological innovation but also align with broader market trends, where regional organizations are increasingly driven to adopt contactless solutions by security needs, user expectations, and regulatory pressures.

The pandemic put contactless biometrics in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, but it turned out to be exactly the right technology at the right time.

Quite predictably, security stands as the primary driver, but not in the traditional sense of simply preventing unauthorized access through basic authentication. “The key driver is the need for stronger security, delivered through a frictionless journey that connects secure physical access with seamless digital identity experiences,” explains Flam. Advances in AI have also significantly sharpened fraud detection capabilities and strengthened spoof resistance. This provides institutions with the confidence they need as fraud levels continue rising globally across all sectors.

The economic dimension of security concerns adds another layer of urgency for the decision-makers. “As the cost of fraud climbs, biometric authentication is proving to be both a stronger shield and smarter investment,” adds Flam. All of this is making the business case for contactless biometrics increasingly compelling from a financial risk management perspective.

The demand for frictionless user experiences represents the second major driver, as organizations need to approach the balance between security and convenience more flexibly. “Employees, customers, and travelers expect to move without cards, PINs, or passwords,” notes Flam, adding that this expectation shift has created a new baseline for acceptable user experience. As a result, convenience is not just desirable but essential for user adoption and operational efficiency across diverse applications. In other words, from workplace access to payments and boarding gates, contactless verification delivers speed and simplicity, boosting satisfaction, adoption, and overall operational efficiency.

Speaking of operations, it is clear why driving their efficiency at scale represents the third major driving force, particularly for high-traffic environments. “Airports, stadiums, financial centers, and other high-traffic environments need to move thousands of people quickly and securely. Biometrics remove bottlenecks and enable systems that are both faster and more resilient,” says Flam.

Similarly, for NEC, the efficiency benefits of contactless biometrics are designed to minimize physical interaction, reduce these bottlenecks in high-traffic areas, and improve the overall user experience. This improvement has direct measurable business benefits, including reduced wait times, improved customer satisfaction, and enhanced operational capacity.

Looking beyond the lenses of efficiency, Iris ID identifies increasing cyber and physical security threats as key motivators, alongside the growing deployment of biometrics in critical sectors including travel, healthcare, and finance. “Whether it is due to cyber-attacks or actual physical breaches, we are seeing an increase in these activities that are putting people’s Personal Identifiable Information (PII) as well as sensitive corporate information at risk,” explains Murad. This threat landscape evolution makes advanced authentication not just preferable but necessary for organizational survival.

Less obvious but no less strong driving force is the regulatory pressure, which, according to Ibrahim, includes “increased hygiene awareness post-pandemic, stronger demand for secure yet frictionless access, rapid digital transformation across industries, and government regulations encouraging higher authentication standards.” These regulatory frameworks also promote the use of privacy-by-design features like decentralized storage and irreversible biometric templates, making adoption necessary rather than optional in many sectors.

Subscription and Cloud Models Transform Biometric Access

As these drivers are reshaping how the solutions are deployed, various cloud-based and subscription models have emerged in response to the needs of organizations that seek flexibility and scalability.

The evolution toward flexible deployment models reflects both the industry’s growing maturity in understanding diverse customer needs across different organizational sizes, technical capabilities, and operational requirements. The majority of providers now offer various implementation approaches, ranging from traditional on-premises systems to fully cloud-based, subscription-style services that can be deployed rapidly with minimal technical overhead.

IDEMIA articulates the industry’s increasingly flexible approach to deployment. “Some clients prefer traditional on-premises systems, while others are moving toward cloud-based or subscription-style models. For organizations looking to minimize upfront investment, we can structure solutions in a service or subscription format. For others, a more conventional licensing model may be the right fit,” explains Flam. This customization capability allows organizations to optimize their investment approach based on capital allocation strategies and operational requirements.

Cloud-first solutions are gaining traction across the industry as organizations seek to reduce infrastructure complexity while maintaining scalable performance. With this purpose in mind, Iris ID has launched iTMS Cloud, creating a platform that enables real-time workforce management data to flow seamlessly into existing HR systems. The company is also developing a subscription-based model for the time & attendance market that will allow partners to access the iT100 and iT100-AMP models on a subscription basis, providing operational flexibility at more predictable costs. Iris ID maintains support for organizations with a focus on specific data governance requirements. “For a high security community of customers, we continue to support on-premises solutions for organizations with strict data governance requirements, such as GDPR compliance,” says Murad.

NEC also leverages its cloud infrastructure through Identity Cloud Service and NeoFace Cloud, hosted on Microsoft Azure, to provide subscription-ready biometric verification services. This approach is designed to deliver ease of deployment and cost-effectiveness, allowing clients to access facial and iris recognition capabilities while minimizing operational overhead. The cloud-based approach also supports additional benefits, including remote monitoring, real-time updates, and integration with existing enterprise systems.

Their competitor ZKTeco opted for a dual-track approach with its BioTime Cloud platform, which provides cloud-based and subscription-ready options. “Biometrics-as-a-Service enables organizations to scale easily, optimize costs, and integrate seamlessly with third-party applications”, says Ibrahim. Through Armatura, ZKTeco also offers BioCode, representing a new approach to decentralized biometric deployment. This solution stores encrypted templates on users’ devices while generating dynamic QR codes for secure access authentication. The decentralized architecture reduces central server vulnerabilities while enhancing user privacy through local data control.

The technical sophistication of these deployment models reflects broader industry trends toward edge computing and distributed authentication. Organizations can now choose from hybrid on-premises and cloud options that address data protection requirements while maintaining the scalability and operational benefits of cloud-based services. This flexibility may prove essential for organizations operating across multiple regulatory environments or managing varying security requirements across different facilities.

Cloud-First Deployment Philosophy

Suprema’s BioStar Air represents a prime example of the cloud-first deployment philosophy, completely eliminating the need for on-premises servers. The platform enables devices to connect directly to the cloud infrastructure, supporting pure cloud-to-cloud server-level integration with the help of standard REST APIs. The architecture simplifies deployment by eliminating the need for servers or software installation. Sites can be brought online within minutes and fully configured in about an hour, according to Shenawy.

The platform also offers GDPR-compliant privacy protection through Template-on-Mobile technology, which stores biometric templates directly on user devices rather than in centralized databases. This approach addresses privacy concerns while maintaining authentication performance and system reliability.

From Banking to Data Centers: Sectoral Biometric Adoption

Different industry sectors are adopting contactless biometrics at varying rates and scales, driven by their specific security requirements, regulatory environments, operational constraints, and user experience priorities. The adoption patterns reveal sector-specific considerations that influence technology selection and deployment approaches.

Banking is leading the way, with biometrics replacing cards and passwords across mobile apps, ATMs, and in-branch services.

Banking and finance have emerged as leading adopters, driven by both security imperatives and evolving customer experience expectations. “Banking is leading the way, with biometrics replacing cards and passwords across mobile apps, ATMs, and in-branch services,” explains Flam. The financial sector’s adoption encompasses both customer-facing and internal applications, with biometrics enhancing security while streamlining user experiences. Additionally, these implementations strengthen employee traceability and reduce insider fraud risks.

The financial sector’s embrace of contactless biometrics extends to specialized applications that demonstrate the technology’s versatility. Ibrahim highlights palm-based ATM access systems with extremely low false acceptance rates, providing banking institutions with highly secure alternatives to traditional card-based transactions while maintaining user convenience. Airports and aviation represent perhaps the most visible and strategically important deployment vertical, often serving as proving grounds for large-scale contactless biometric implementations.

For example, NEC powers Star Alliance Biometrics at Frankfurt and Munich airports, demonstrating how biometric systems can handle massive passenger volumes while improving operational efficiency. IDEMIA’s technologies are also deployed across airports, stadiums, and corporate offices worldwide, showcasing the scalability and reliability needed for high-traffic environments.

In the government sector, Iris ID supports nationwide immigration processing through Qatar’s Ministry of Interior, handling the complex security and throughput requirements of border control operations. This deployment manages large volumes of travelers while maintaining the accuracy and security standards essential for national security applications. The system’s integration with existing immigration infrastructure demonstrates the maturity of biometric technology for critical government operations.

Healthcare has also emerged as a critical vertical where institutions must balance multiple priorities, including hygiene requirements, regulatory compliance, and patient data protection. The sector’s adoption addresses stringent patient data protection requirements while ensuring secure access to both physical facilities and digital records. Healthcare implementations often require integration with existing hospital information systems and compliance with regulations like HIPAA, making deployment complexity a key consideration.

Corporate security represents a rapidly growing adoption area, particularly as hybrid work models create new authentication challenges that traditional badge-based systems cannot adequately address. Organizations are implementing biometric systems to secure both physical facility access and remote system authentication, often integrating these capabilities with existing HR systems for workforce management.

The regionally relevant oil and gas sector has industry-specific requirements that drive biometric adoption. These facilities require robust authentication systems that can operate reliably in challenging environmental conditions while maintaining strict security protocols. Also, construction sites mushrooming across the ME region represent another specialized application where traditional card-based systems face practical challenges due to harsh working conditions and the temporary nature of worker assignments.

Finally, one of the more recent rising star customers for contactless biometrics is data centers. They increasingly represent high-security applications where biometric authentication provides essential protection for critical infrastructure while enabling efficient access for authorized technical personnel. These deployments often require integration with existing security systems and compliance with industry-specific regulations and standards.

Why Balancing Contactless and Traditional Biometrics Remains Relevant

While these deployments showcase the power of contactless modalities, fingerprint technology continues to evolve and retain relevance in specific contexts. Actually, in the region of the Middle East, simple replacement or overnight elimination of fingerprint biometrics is currently not an option. The more realistic path is measured adaptation and strategic integration, characterized by coexistence and complementary deployment of various modalities.

At IDEMIA, they feel that the pragmatic approach is the best one when it comes to fingerprint longevity. According to Flam, “traditional fingerprint biometrics will continue to play an important role in physical and logical access control in the future.” The reasons for it are simple: user familiarity and special applications give it staying power in applications where traceability and cost-effectiveness are primary concerns, such as at small manufacturing sites and jewelry stores where the user population may be smaller.

Beyond commercial applications, fingerprint identification is also likely to remain mandatory in various government and police applications where established protocols, legal requirements, and integration with existing criminal justice systems make alternative modalities less practical.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is also recognized as a key driver of the coexistence of contactless and traditional biometric models. “Traditional biometrics such as fingerprints will increasingly coexist with other modalities in a layered security approach”, says Murad, adding that “the core objective of MFA is to make stealing personally identifiable information (PII) as difficult as possible, discouraging criminal attempts.”

Delivering synergy instead of competition is how NEC sees a coexistence model with older biometric workhorses. In this case, contactless solutions can handle mass authentication, while fingerprints remain a critical tool in high-security and specialized scenarios. Based on the concept of the “division of labor”, this operational specialization will make practical sense for organizations managing diverse security requirements across multiple facilities.

Cultural and Regional Realities Sustaining Fingerprint Biometrics

Cultural and regional factors also ensure continued fingerprint relevance in specific markets and applications. “In contexts where cultural factors make other biometrics less practical, fingerprint continues to be the preferred option”,  Flam explains.

ZKTeco’s Ibrahim elaborates on this point: “Fingerprint biometrics remain cost-effective and widely adopted, especially in scenarios where alternatives may not be feasible. Also, in the Middle East market, cultural or religious reasons—such as women covering their faces—may necessitate fingerprint use.”

In contexts where cultural factors make other biometrics less practical, fingerprint continues to be the preferred option.

This cultural sensitivity consideration is crucial for regional deployments, where technical superiority alone cannot determine adoption success. Religious practices, cultural preferences, and local regulations may require alternative authentication methods regardless of the technical capabilities of contactless solutions.

Embedding Security and Compliance into Biometric Design

As modalities coexist and adapt, the question of privacy and trust becomes central, with providers embedding stronger safeguards into every layer of design. Manufacturers increasingly understand that privacy protection begins with fundamental system design principles that embed protection mechanisms at the hardware level. IDEMIA’s approach, for instance, extends beyond data encryption to encompass comprehensive lifecycle protection. “Our commitment extends throughout the entire data lifecycle, where we apply GDPR principles to make privacy an intrinsic part of system design and operation”, says Flam.

The technical foundation of this privacy-by-design approach relies on advanced cryptographic methods. This approach recognizes that privacy protection must be integral to system architecture rather than an add-on feature. “Presentation Attack Detection is a must for any modern biometric system. Moreover, all our solutions are built on algorithms that meet ISO 30107-3 compliance, and have undergone thorough testing by the iBeta laboratory, ensuring reliability, accuracy, and trust,” says Flam. These third-party validations provide independent verification of security claims and enable organizations to make informed procurement decisions based on standard metrics.

For their approach to the issue of privacy and trust, Iris ID emphasizes user consent and data encryption. “Use of the system requires an explicit opt-in enrollment process by each user. All biometric data captured during enrollment is immediately encrypted and cannot be reversed or decoded into its original image of an eye. We do not collect, retain, or store biometric data belonging to the end users. Data ownership and control remain with the deploying organization,” says Murad.

In this high-stakes game, ZKTeco plays the card of a focused compliance approach, noting that its technologies comply with privacy acts in major regions, including GDPR, CCPA, BIPA, and others. “All our biometric technologies use templates derived from fragments of biometric features, rather than original images. Our solutions incorporate infrared, lidar, video analytics, and 3D structured light facial recognition”, explains Ibrahim.

Taken together, these approaches demonstrate that privacy, security, and trust are no longer optional add-ons but core pillars of contactless biometric systems. By combining robust technical safeguards, regulatory compliance, and user-centric data control, the industry is creating solutions that organizations can deploy with confidence while respecting individual privacy.

System Integration: Making Biometrics Work

While biometric technology companies focus on developing advanced authentication capabilities, the practical success of contactless biometrics often depends on seamless integration with existing access control infrastructure. Josh Baker, Product Manager for Integrations at ICT, provides insights into the integration perspective that complements the technology provider’s viewpoints.

ICT utilizes APIs and SDKs provided by integration partners to incorporate biometric readers into its Enterprise Access Control Platform, Protege GX. The integration encompasses device management, user enrollment, and user synchronization based on access requirements, all handled within the central platform.

“Challenges with biometric integrations are typically device-related, incorrect programming of the devices, firmware version compatibility, or connection issues,” Baker explains. However, he notes that “the integrations themselves are straightforward,” with ICT providing detailed application notes and 24/7 technical support to address implementation issues.

From an integration perspective, the benefits extend beyond enhanced security to encompass centralized credential management and environmental considerations. “For ICT, integrating biometrics with our access control allows a centralized management of users; biometric credentials become tracked as any other credential and can be reported on easily,” says Baker.

The environmental impact proves particularly significant in high-turnover environments. “There are environmental and practical benefits to using biometrics, especially in applications with high turnover of users, such as education or hospitals. It avoids printing hundreds or thousands of cards, which will be thrown away after a year or so,” adds Baker. ICT’s higher education deployment demonstrates the dual-purpose potential of contactless biometrics. Students use facial recognition not only for secure facility access but also for automatic attendance recording, creating better security and operational efficiency through a single system that eliminates manual processes while enhancing access control.

This integration perspective highlights how the success of contactless biometric deployments depends not only on the quality of the biometric technology itself but also on the sophistication of the platforms that integrate these capabilities into comprehensive security and operational management systems.

The Seamless Future

The first stage of the contactless biometric revolution is complete. What began as a pandemic necessity has evolved into the new standard for identity verification. Thus, today’s organizations aren’t simply replacing old systems but rather reimagining what authentication can mean for them and their customers. Deploying the right modality for each specific need is essential: facial recognition delivers convenience, iris scanning provides unmatched security, and palm recognition offers precision where it matters most.

Also, the shift toward cloud-first, subscription-based models has democratized access to sophisticated authentication technologies. This allowed organizations of all sizes to implement enterprise-grade security without massive upfront investments. At the same time, privacy-by-design principles ensure that enhanced security doesn’t come at the cost of user trust.

The Middle East and Africa region exemplifies this transformation, where cultural sensitivity and technological innovation converge to create deployment strategies that respect local preferences while meeting global security standards. There and beyond, the future of contactless identity verification seems clear enough: it is frictionless, intelligent, and increasingly indispensable.