What You Need to Know About Adding Secure ID Scanning to Your App

| Products & Solutions

What You Need to Know About Adding Secure ID Scanning to Your App

By Nico Tarasoff, Account Executive, Transportation & Logistics, Scandit Inc.

Whether you’re a retailer verifying age when selling controlled goods such as alcohol or an airline confirming a traveller’s identity when checking in for a flight – the ability to quickly and accurately capture and confirm relevant identity document data is an essential part of millions of interactions for all types of enterprises daily.

Innovative enterprises are looking to digital and mobile technologies to improve customer experiences, optimize operations and create a competitive edge.

For SAS (Scandinavian Airlines), exceeding passengers’ sky high expectations and improving efficiency for boarding flights was the goal – so they enabled passport and boarding pass checks from anywhere in the airport on Samsung smartphone devices with a Scandit-powered ID scanning app.

For retailer Valora, it was all about innovating to offer new, customer experiences – with a 24/7 cashierless convenience store enabled by a self-scanning app with Scandit ID scanning to verify age before entering the unmanned store.

For both organisations, adding secure Scandit ID scanning to their mobile apps has helped them stand apart from the competition, unlock new efficiencies and reduce costs. Watch our video to see how speedy and seamless Scandit ID Scanning software is in action.

Do your employees or customers manually type in ID data?

Many enterprises still rely on their employees or customers, manually typing and inputting ID data into apps and systems. This makes for slow processes and leaves the door open for typos and human error.

Dedicated hardware ID scanners can be costly and inflexible

For those businesses that have already deployed digital ID scanning into some processes, reliance on dedicated hardware scanning devices can be costly and inflexible, for example, an expensive podium with a scanner, monitor and PC for scanning passports at an airport departure gate. Replacing this fixed set-up with a Scandit-powered mobile app on a smart device can reduce the TCO (total cost of ownership) of scanning by up to 60%. Read more about how Air Travel uses ID scanning software.

However, you can’t replace dedicated hardware if the scanning performance is going to regress. And for customer-facing apps, scanning must work on any device a consumer might use. Scandit ID scanning software offers unrivaled enterprise-grade performance in terms of speed and accuracy, even if scanning is done in bad light or at wide angles or long distance. Plus, it works on over 20,000 models of smart device, ensuring even low-cost smartphones are capable of high quality scanning.

Less Typing, Less Human Error, More Speed

With Scandit, enterprise-grade, secure ID scanning can be added to apps on everyday smart devices. It’s a simple, cost effective, secure way to rapidly scan, capture and parse data from a range of global ID documents with mobile apps – all from an intuitive, familiar device.

The high performance software delivers fast, error-free ID scanning into any employee workflow or customer-facing process with assured data privacy. Customers can effortlessly scan documents including passports, driving licenses or national ID cards with their personal smartphones, and employees can use smart devices to complete tasks involving ID scans more quickly and accurately. Scandit’s high performance scanning means people don’t have to worry about mis-scans or waste time finding the perfect angle, distance or lighting conditions to scan a document – it will simply work.

Alaska Airlines upgrades and modernizes boarding with mobile ID scanning

Working with Scandit, another air travel firm Alaska Airlines now has 5,000 check-in and gate agents using mobile devices to scan passports and boarding passes, helping to get flyers quickly and painlessly from the departure concourse to their seat on the aircraft. Customer service agents use iPad Mini tablets, powered by Scandit, to quickly scan a variety of passenger and crew documentation as part of performing critical processes, including flight check-in, passport and boarding pass verification. The new mobile app enables agents to provide a hassle-free boarding process and to complete customer service workflows much more efficiently.

“Enabling our agents to be mobile, frees them from being tied to hardware and allows us to reimagine the boarding experience without the usual podiums. If we need to change gates, we can just walk over with our iPads. If there is a guest that needs special assistance before boarding, we can provide customer service beside them instead of having them come to the podium.” Francis Brown, Product Manager, Alaska Airlines

 

Valora Use ID Scanning for App Onboarding to avecBox Unmanned Convenience Store

Valora operates 2,700 small scale retail outlets across Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, offering convenience and food that’s quick and fresh. They’ve recently gone one step further, launching 24/7 cashless convenience at avec stores, where customers self-scan and pay for their shopping with the avec mobile app, powered by Scandit.

The scan engine for the mobile app had to perform fast, error-free barcode scanning for self-scanning shopping plus optical character recognition (OCR)to read the identity documentation needed for customer registration during the initial onboarding process. Scandit’s Barcode Scanner SDK and ID Scanning provided both capabilities.

“The customer experience plays a central role in the whole avec convenience concept of Valora. The process begins with registration and continues through customer contact and error handling and on to payment. Customer experience and convenience are closely linked. With the new avec formats, convenience applies not just to the range of the store, but to the entire shopping experience.” Dominique Martin, Manager Consumer Application for Valora.

It’s Simple to Integrate Secure ID Scanning into any App or Website

Scandit’s ID scanning can be easily added into any existing native app. It’s an enterprise-grade solution that combines barcode scanning, text recognition (OCR) and support for RFID technology, to enable scanning of Machine Readable Zones (MRZ), PDF417 codes, as well as biometric RFID chips.

The user simply scans the barcode or MRZ on the document with a smart device and the Scandit software will capture and parse the relevant data. Supported ID types include ePassports, ID cards, machine readable passports, visa stickers and driving licenses. It can also be used with RFID passports, just scan the MRZ, and then hold the device next to the biometric chip to  confirm the validity of the document.

In addition to adding scanning to native apps, US and Canadian driving licenses can be scanned directly into a web browser. The Scandit Web SDK will add this functionality in minutes by adding a few lines of code to your website or web app.

ID Scanning on Over 20,000 Smart Device Types

Particularly if your app is to be used by customers on their own personal smartphones, you want to be confident the ID scanning software will support any smartphone. Scandit’s software can be deployed on over 20,000 smart device models. This also gives flexibility to organisations who may want employees to be able to use a range of different devices for ID scanning.

New efficiencies and user-experiences can be created by enabling employees or customers to complete multiple tasks involving both ID scanning and barcode scanning on a single smart device.  For example, a retail customer can scan their ID to onboard to a self-scanning shopping app, then also use the same smart device to scan a coupons and scan a barcode to lookup product information like reviews or availability during the same shopping trip.

Try it for yourself with a demo

The best way to get started with the Scandit ID Scanning is to get a demo app. Once you have downloaded the demo you can begin scanning many different ID documents immediately and envisaging how the solution can positively impact your workflows.

If you have specific questions you may also want to contact a Scandit solutions executive and learn more about the functionality of the Scandit ID Scanning software.