CrucialTec, one of the world’s leading fingerprint sensor developers, held a promotional event for the Fast IDentification Online Alliance, an international consortium for the standardization of authentication technology, on Monday in Seoul.

Monday’s meeting was part of the lead-up to the FIDO Alliance plenary conference, scheduled to be held at CrucialTec’s head office in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province, from Tuesday to Thursday. The meeting is aimed at introducing the FIDO Alliance and its authentication technology to local government agencies, financial institutions and private companies.

“FIDO’s open-standard technologies for authentication have a brighter future than any other authentication technologies,” said Michael Barrett, president of the FIDO Alliance. 

Barrett added that FIDO’s authentication technology has a competitive edge over Apple’s Touch ID, a fingerprint recognition solution that he said allows only a small fraction of the world’s smartphone users to shop on their mobile devices.

The FIDO Alliance, officially launched in 2013, has 140 members, including CrucialTec, Samsung Electronics, PayPal, Lenovo, Google, Bank of America and Microsoft, some of which have adopted the FIDO-enabled services and devices.

China’s largest e-commerce firm Alibaba, which joined the FIDO Alliance in July, is one of the newest members.

“E-commerce and IT firms are the ones which have the greatest need and immediate business cases to utilize the FIDO technology,” said Berett McDowell, executive director of the FIDO Alliance. “By the fourth quarter of 2014, more firms in various sectors including those from China will adopt the FIDO technology.”

Around 100 officials from tech firms, financial institutions and government organizations participated in the promotional event.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)