Headquartered in Silicon Valley, with offices in New York and Washington D.C. and its R&D Centre in Hawaii, E-Smart Technologies Inc. is now seeking to list its stocks at the Dubai International Financial Exchange (DIFX).
In an exclusive interview with the Khaleej Times, Mary Grace, CEO of E-Smart Technologies, said her company's listing at the Dubai International Financial Exchange would help it to cash on Dubai's burgeoning technological and financial expanse.
Grace did not say what would be the size of the initial public offering and when the issue would be open for subscription. She, however, said that her company was looking at some lucrative deals locally.
“Our technology is the perfect solution to the ATM fraud problems facing the world today,” Grace said.
Several banks in the UAE last week said that they have suffered illegal withdrawals made by individuals using counterfeit automated teller machine (ATM) cards. The banks promised to repay the victims, sent warnings through text messages to their clients and posted security-alert notices on their websites telling them to change their personal identification numbers (PIN).
E-Smart is not the only company in the world that sells biometric security, but Grace said her company was the exclusive supplier of the Biometric Verification Security (BVS2) system, the “I AM” card and the Super SMART Card system and related system technologies for Asia, Africa and the US.
She said these smartcards have an on-card sensor and a full match on-card system and other unique technologies for secure biometric ID verification. E-Smart's next generation technologies allow governments, public and private institutions, healthcare providers and insurers, companies large and small, to provide a superior level of protection.
The “I AM” card, Super SMART Card system and BVS2 security system can assist in securing countries from criminal and terrorist threats, stop ID and payment fraud, along with identity theft in connection with physical and logical access and financial transactions, including telephone, Internet payment and other financial and data related transactions all while protecting individual privacy.
“We are like a Rolls Royce or tank and other [competitors] are like bicycles.”
Using advanced nano-technology, E-Smart developed a way of storing sensitive personal data onto one universal card. While the system itself is not revolutionary, the company claims that its new 'smart cards' are fraud-proof and can provide unprecedented fluidity to our everyday lives.
Already being deployed in the financial, government, and commercial sectors in South Korea, the company is hoping to utilise on Dubai's keen interest in everything new and innovative.
“Dubai is like a James Bond city and this is a James Bond Card,” Grace said.
While the engineering behind the card is complex, its use is relatively simple. With the ease of a thumb print on the plastic, subscribers will essentially be given the ability to breeze through airport security, shop for groceries, start the car engine, and withdraw cash securely from ATMS - eliminating any chance of fraud or identification theft.
“The options for public use are limitless,” she claimed.
Subscribers will have the option to register their birth certificate, passport, driver's license, and visa into the system, but skeptics raise doubts about pumping an individual's entire life onto one card in the chance that it may be lost or stolen.
“If you do a study of biometric smart cards,” Grace explains, “You'll find that most of them have been implemented, and then failed.”
“Ours will not,” she adds. “If lost, your fingerprint is already registered in the system and the card becomes completely invalid.”
But privacy advocates fear that indulging so much personal information to a registry is dangerous and intrusive.
Although E-Smart Inc. was awarded highly profitable contracts in China and other parts of Asia, the American market remains sensitive to government's collection of personal data and has yet to contract the company for implementation of its advanced system.
“This is revolutionary technology,” Grace claims.
“Our long-term vision is to have a global network over which all fraud-proof and counterfeit-proof payments are made and all fraud-proof IDs are verified from border to border, country to country. This is the future.”
The actress turned tycoon fell into the super gadget industry quite accidentally. After appearing in a number of sitcoms in the 1960s and '70s, the attractive star began writing and adapting children's fairytales. While trying to promote her stories in the emerging market of China, Grace would gain the trust of government and business officials through her celebrity status, helping the telecom magnate to garner lucrative deals in the technology sector.