<March 04, 2019, Taipei, for immediate release> Benefiting from the “Digital India”, “Universal Payment Interface” and “Aadhaar numbers” and other new policies contributed to the explosive growth of the Indian mobile payment market, the fingerprint reader has become the next popular device. Today (4)Startek, SuperC-Touch and Innolux signed an exclusive MOUs on the “Glass Capacitive Fingerprint Readers”, witnessed by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Small and Medium Enterprises Administration.

Startek Engineering, which has been working on the Indian public sector for more than a decade, is one of the important suppliers of optical fingerprint readers in India. Chairman Hsu Wen-Hsing said Prime Minister Modi transformed India by integrating soft power and hardware technology. In 2016, Startek supplied more than one million optical fingerprint readers to Indian banks and telecom service providers. In 2017, a new AI team was established to develop cloud fingerprints. The comparison system Bioserver provides security control for the check-in and cloud data inventory, so that the cloud fingerprint authentication is everywhere.

Dr. Hsu pointed out that the traditional optical fingerprinting reader has limited sensing area which is not applicable to the Indian papamama retail channels. Chairman Hsu pointed out that Startek adopts the technology of glass sensors manufactured by Super C Touch and Innolux, a thin, high-sensitivity, customized fingerprint identification sensor machine, to aim at banking, retail POS, ad catering payment market.

Other than Indian market, Dr. Hsu pointed out that China actively promotes the identification of fingerprints and will complete the whole population fingerprinting by 2020. China, at the same time, gradually promotes the eKYC system (electronic-Know-Your-Customer) to strengthen information flow, manpower flow, payment flow and etc. China will shift from the fixed-point real-name authentication to mobile eKYC system, and detonate hundreds of millions of external fingerprint machine business opportunities. Surprisingly, it is necessary to be equipped an external fingerprint reader in the fields of purchasing mobile phone number, bank account opening, transfer, purchase of tickets, and ride management.

Startek cultivated US fingerprinting market and obtained customer trust. Startek laid out business plan in Brazil, which is considering using fingerprint identification sensor as general election voting interface. Mastering the important channels of India, Brazil, the United States, and China, Startek will take a lead at information security field.

Different from the smart phone "personal unlock" technology, SuperC-Touch cut into the "identify verfication" fingerprint recognizer pie, and in November 2017 won the Ministry of Economics Innovation Technology Award with perturbation resonance technology, with more than 250 Patent certifications.

Howard Wang, Vice Chairman of SuperC-Touch, pointed out that rather than using the wafer as carrier, our sensing circuit is made on the TFT glass, with the exclusive perturbation resonance technology, which is larger, thinner and lighter than the traditional wafer fingerprint identification sensor.

Mr. Wang pointed out that Taiwan has the most complete and high-yield one-stop supply chain of fingerprint identification sensor. This strategic alliance comes at the best timing to enter India. Wang said that India is now like China 10 years ago. Digital India policy regulates 1.2 billion Indians complete the 12-digit Aadhaar ID and the 2016 UPI policy accelerates the operation. Certification and mobile payment needs adequate equipment, but the market lacks thinner, affordable, large-area fingerprint sensors. SuperC-Touch and Innolux signed an exclusive glass-capacitive fingerprint reader contract, in an attempt to take the Indian fingerprint reader leading position.

When the global pursuit of Gen 10.5 fab expansion, the niche products light up the fire for old generation fab. Dr. CK Wei of Innolux’s Technology Development Center pointed out that G3.5 LTPS fab features four advantages over wafers in manufacturing fingerprint identifiers:

(1) The Innolux’s G3.5 LTPS fab has a 620*750mm TFT glass substrate area that is 14 times the area of 8-inch wafers. It has larger manufacturing capacity and competitive price.
(2) The fingerprint coating of the fingerprint reader, the TFT glass substrate can be thinner than the wafer, and the sensitivity of the sensing can be improved to clearly see the sweat hole of the fingerprint. (3) Based on the consideration of security, the larger the area of fingerprint identification sensor, the higher the security of the data. Compared with wafers, fingerprint identifiers made of TFT glass substrates can achieve advantages such as large area, lower price, and higher productivity.
(4) Innolux’s G3.5 LTPS factory TFT glass substrate can produce hard and flexible fingerprint identifiers, flexible production line application, and provide customized card readers and other customized fingerprint readers in the market.

Dr. Hsu, Chairman of Startek, said that the glass capacitive fingerprinting machine is an emerging blue ocean. The mobile eKYC market is expected to have hundreds of millions of potential shipment. The price is the key for expansion from the business market to small retail stores. Dr. Hsu pointed out that Startek target banking and retail POS fingerprinting market, with a scale of more than 2 million units, and hopes to grow in multiples within five years. Howard Wang said the pilot run of glass capacitive fingerprint identification sensor of Innolux and SuperC-Touch has been completed in Q1, and expected to be mass-produced in Q3 in 2019 with high profit and high growth potential.