Two million in funding secured for fingerprint sensor

17th April 2019

Alex Lynn

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Disruptive fingerprint technology company, Touch Biometrix, has received a £2m investment from Deepbridge Capital. The Series A funding through the Deepbridge Technology Growth Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) fund follows initial seed funding of £150,000 last year. North Wales based Touch Biometrix is developing a new class of fingerprint sensor for application to consumer electronics such as smartphones and laptops.

Based on proprietary sensor designs and algorithms, the Touch Biometrix platform will enable fingerprint sensors of any shape or size that can be integrated easily into a wide range of consumer electronics and smart objects.

The user authentication experience aims to not only be more intuitive, it will also offer unbreakable security, eliminating the need for passwords.

The technology under development is expected to disrupt the cost of ownership by targeting a sensor price of less than $1 per sensor by the end of 2019, so opening the market for integration of a low-cost, highly secure biometric authentication platform, not only into high tier brands but also into low and mid tier consumer electronics.

Mike Cowin, CEO of St Asaph headquartered Touch Biometrix, said: “This new and substantial investment from Deepbridge will enable Touch Biometrix to build upon its development work with the aim of defining its first minimum viable product ahead of scaled production in early 2020.

“Deepbridge is a specialist in investing in growth-focused tech businesses. In addition to funding, they also have a hugely experienced team which has provided us with the best possible support, advice and encouragement. They are the ideal partner for Touch Biometrix.”

Ian Warwick, Managing Partner of Deepbridge Capital, added: “We are delighted to continue our support for Touch Biometrix at what is an exciting time for the biometric industry. We understand there is an increasing need for secure user authentication technology and we believe Touch Biometrix has the capability to move quickly in this market. This investment will support the commercialisation of its technology platform.”

The market demand for fingerprint sensors is expected to exceed 1.5 billion units per year by 2020 with the global market for biometrics to reach $15bn by 2025.

The demand for user authentication is experiencing tremendous growth as the drive to increase the adoption of highly secure and cost-effective user identification for the use of mobile payment services continues. It is expected that biometrics will be standard in 90% of mobile devices by 2022, generating 1.37 trillion payment and non-payment mobile device transactions.