Goode Intelligence issued an analyst report forecasting that by 2019 there will be 5.5 billion users of mobile and wearable biometric technology worldwide.

Gemalto is supplying China Telecom with its UpTeq Multi-Tenant NFC SIM to support their commercial rollout of near field communication services. China Telecom subscribers will be able to choose from multiple types of NFC-enabled mobile phones to make payments for transportation, dining, shopping and petrol throughout the country. Airport check-ins, personal authentication services and employee ID services will be introduced in the future

BYOD challenges enterprises with two stark realties, first, they need to be readying their workforces to use mobile devices and they must make sure that they are able to provide a level of security for mobile devices that matches the level found on the desktop.

Gemalto’s Protiva Cloud Confirm is compatible with HP CloudSystem under the HP Helion cloud portfolio; FIME extended its ISO quality assurance accreditation under ISO17025; the Open Standard for Public Transport Alliance revealed that São Paulo Transporte and Swiss Post Solutions will utilize its CIPURSE standard; and Ram Shriram, a founding board member of Google and former executive at Amazon.com, has joined strong authentication specialist Yubico

MorphoTrak partnered with Identity One to deliver a time & attendance and biometric access control system to a North American freight railroad company; HID Global and Proxama, created a solution enabling deployment of secure mobile web-based coupon and loyalty schemes; and Gemalto launched Sealys Color in Polycarbonate, a system that enables high-quality color photographs to be permanently embedded into polycarbonate documents such as IDs, driving licenses and passports.

AIRSHOP enables retailers to launch their own self-branded mobile wallets for fast and advanced ordering, payment, loyalty, geo-location services and couponing. It has been deployed for retailers including KFC, Carrefour City, G20, Dia and many more.

The Tribeca Film Fest uses HID’s NFC tags for promotion; Fujitsu releases palm vein scanner for physical access; Intercede’s latest MyID can issue and manage trusted identities for machines; New PreCheck enrollment centers opened; Oberthur announced the issuance of 5 million ePassports to Uzbek citizens.

Janrain unveils the Mobile Registration Solution; NexID Biometrics receives a series of funding grants; CA Technologies announced the availability of CA Identity Suite, and codeREADr released “Tap to Verify,” a product that uses NFC tags to authenticate a worker’s physical presence.

The NFC Forum has released nine new technical specifications that aim to deliver greater interoperability, faster read and write performance, mediated handover, and lower power consumption, as well as additional functionality. The Datacard Group has unveiled a new verification module that makes sure unique identifiers are in the correct place.

News briefs of the week. FIME launches NFC validation tool; Bell ID tapped for Canadian TSM project, Frontech North America Inc. unveils palm vein for physical access control; AGNITiO boosts voice ant-spoofing measures; and Kaba releases dual credential locks.