Verayo, Bartronics Unveil Unclonable Solution for Indian ID Market

Initially, Verayo marketed the solution to manufacturers and retailers of high-value luxury goods at risk of being counterfeited. With an RFID interrogator, a consumer purchasing a product—such as a purse, jacket or electronic item—or the retailer could scan that item and view whether the tag (and thus the product to which it was attached) was authentic.

Since then, Verayo has been considering the option of marketing its PUF technology to other sectors where RFID adoption growth is greatest, such as Indian government agencies and mass-transit operators. Here, too, Khandelwal says, there is a demand for an unclonable RFID tag that can be used to verify that an object, such as a mass-transit ticket, is genuine, and not counterfeit.

"In India, we see an uptick in government-led identification solutions," Khandelwal says, "and, therefore, we look at India as an opportunity to step into." Although there are no contracts to sell the tags to government agencies in India, he adds, discussions are currently underway with some agencies.

Typically, Khandelwal says, a Bartronics tag with Verayo security could be embedded in an ID card, encoded with a person's UID number. Alternatively, the tag's 512 bits of memory could be used to store a separate serial number that could be linked to a UID. The tag could also be encoded with other data about the card's owner. Agencies would use an RFID interrogator to read the card's tag in order to verify the card is authentic, and to access cardholder data stored on the centralized government UID database.

Verayo continues to offer its tag as an anticounterfeiting measure for luxury consumer goods, Khandelwal says, adding that the proliferation of cell phones with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology will make the tag more popular, as it would therefore be easily read by consumers to, for instance, provide the authenticity of an expensive product they are buying before they complete the purchase.