My One Academy: JetBlue announced today that it will work together with US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) and aviation technology firm, SITA, to be the first airline to use biometric facial recognition technology to match a person’s identity with their ticket.

Monday, June 5, 2017

JetBlue announced today that it will work together with US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) and aviation technology firm, SITA, to be the first airline to use biometric facial recognition technology to match a person’s identity with their ticket.

-Alfatanah Ibrahim, Business Analyst

Headlines (Week 25/05/2017-31/05/2017)

Boarding your flight? But first, take a selfie. (link)

JetBlue announced today that it will work together with US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) and aviation technology firm, SITA, to be the first airline to use biometric facial recognition technology to match a person’s identity with their ticket.

JetBlue, in a press statement, said that this innovation shall enable its employees to interact more with its guests as the employees need to get out from behind the counter and interact with the guests throughout the process. To enable their employees to manage the check-in process while staying mobile interacting with passengers, JetBlue will equip its employees with iPad Minis.

The pilot of this programme is set to launch in June in selected flights from Boston’s Logan International Airport to Aruba’s Queen Beatrix International Airport. No prior enrolment or registration is required and any of their guests can participate, JetBlue said.

HOW JETBLUE’S SELFIE BOARDING PASS WORKS

A customer can opt to simply step up to a camera and have his or her picture taken, instead of scanning a boarding pass, when boarding a plane.
The picture is then sent to the CBP database where it is matched with visa, passport, or immigration photos. The passenger’s flight details are also verified at the same time.
A screen above the camera will let the passenger know when they have been cleared to board, a screen above the camera will notify them.

While JetBlue is the first airline to use biometric facial recognition to enable people to board planes, other carriers are also experimenting with the facial recognition/photo imaging tech for other solutions.

Delta, in earlier May, announced that it plans to begin testing a system that uses facial recognition to speed up the process of checking their bags this summer.

The airline is using new automated baggage machines at its hub, Minneapolis/St. Paul. These machines with built in facial recognition tech, take a picture of the person dropping the bags off. The picture will then be matched with the person’s passport image to identify them and sync with their boarding ticket.

A few weeks after China, now Russia has its maiden jet flight (link)

In its first post-Soviet foray into production of a mainline commercial aircraft which it hopes will rival those of its Western competitors, Russia carried out the maiden flight of its new MS-21 medium-range passenger plane on Sunday.

The aircraft manufacturer, Irkut Corporation, and its state-controlled parent company United Aircraft Corporation, said in a surprise statement that an MS-21-300 model had successfully completed a 30-minute flight at a height of 1,000 meters and traveling at 300 km an hour.

This is seen by some as a way for Russia to grow its domestic industrial production as a mean to be less dependent on foreign companies, as Russia is trying to manage the aftermath of Western sanctions over its role in the crisis in Crimea.

The surprise test flight, which was not announced to media beforehand, comes just three weeks after China staged the maiden flight of its new C919 passenger jet, highlighting the growing competition to industry heavyweights Boeing and Airbus as the mentioned to continue to hold strong grip over the global market. Russian officials have claimed that the MS-21 is superior to its Western-made counterparts in many respects and will be snapped up by both Russian and foreign carriers, but Western analysts say both Russia and China would still face a huge challenge to break the the transatlantic airplane duopoly.

President Vladimir Putin called the Irkut General Director Oleg Demchenko to congratulate Irkut for what is celebrated as "a significant event" by Kremlin. The twin-engine MS-21 will be built in two variants: the MS-21-300 which will have 160-211 seats, and the later MS-21-200 which will have 130-165 with production is expected to start in the next two years. Irkut said it so far had "firm orders" for 175 planes.

-Hoji Akbar, Consultant

Fintech is brewing in Southeast Asia.

Singapore is leading the way in embracing the new technology and generating its full potential despite Malaysia starting at the same time.

The moment fintech started generating hype in the world few years back, Malaysia among its counterparts in Southeast Asia, also geared to embrace this new technology. One of the most important initiatives the government came up with is the Sandbox (Financial Technology Regulatory Sandbox Framework) to allow fintech companies to test their products and services in a live yet safe and regulated environment. Bank Negara Malaysia is playing an active role to promote and facilitate safe integration of fintech into the system. Because of this support, Malaysia’s fintech generated the transactions worth US$7,207m as of January 2017. This is a very impressive figure given that the industry is still in its infancy.

However, Singapore, embarking on the fintech at the same time with Malaysia, registered fintech related transactions worth US$13,476m as of January 2017, almost double the amount of Malaysia’s.

A closer look into the challenges that Malaysia is facing gives us some interesting insights and learning points.

First of all, Blockchain, a technology used in Fintech is still seen as an untamed beast, thus most SMEs are wary of it and reluctant to go into the fintech space. In both Malaysia and Singapore, large corporations dominate the development of blockchain. However, the way forward for these aspiring SMEs to embrace the fintech will be to use the technology via SaaS model (like Trello).

Second of all, as the mistrust of public towards online payment was the case in the late 1990s, the public is getting cautious of contactless/cashless payment such as PayWave and PayPass. The recent viral buzz in the social medias about how some freeware apps in Google Playstore or Apple Appstore can pick-pocket the vital information from the debit card with wavepay technology. Later BNM issued a press release refuting the claim by stating the cards are equipped with necessary safety features that makes it impossible to clone or make an unauthorized transaction.

Thirdly, funding is a big headache for fintech start-ups. The volatility of the currency (MYR) is doing a disservice causing international and local VC investors to be wary of local investment opportunities.
And lastly, most incumbent financial institutions are feeling reluctant to join the wave by fearing that it may cause job losses and some of them not wanting to change the status quo.

This challenges that Malaysian fintech industry is facing are prevalent in most of Southeast Asia’s countries. Way forward to embrace and reap the full benefits of this new technology will be to be a facilitating partner, not the regulatory body that hinders the fintech innovations by continuously evaluating potential risks and mitigating them along the way.

The article is adapted from the original article “5 Challenges Of The M'sian Fintech Industry And How Experts Say We Can Overcome Them” posted on Vulcan Post on 2017-02-06.