Desmond’s Daon offshoot seals Japanese deals

Biometrics firm among the Irish companies to announce new partnerships in Japan, writes Fearghal O’Connor

A JAPANESE-focused joint venture led by Daon — Dermot Desmond’s biometrics company — has won a string of new contracts for its digital authentication technology that could see it grow to 15 million users within five years.

Polarify, a joint venture between Daon and Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), provides authentication services for banks, e-commerce providers and other financial service providers. It has signed up a series of new clients in recent weeks, beginning with e-wallet provider Pay Pay, a Yahoo Japan service that boasts 600,000 online customers.

“We hope Polarify will have registered between five and seven million individual identities by this time next year,” said Clive Bourke, Daon’s president of EMEA and APAC. “It is an impressive ramping up, and the business plan is for it to get to 15 million users over five years.”

Polarify already has 15 key clients, including Japan’s biggest life insurer, Nippon Life Insurance, and SMBC, but Pay Pay is the first to sign up for its newly launched e-KYC (electronic know-your-customer) service.

Polarify’s e-KYC service is run using Daon’s technology but has been tailored for the Japanese financial services market, allowing institutions to register new customers remotely, rather than in a branch.

Daon already has a partnership in Japan with NEC to record fingerprints and facial images of foreign travellers arriving at airports.

The deals, which mark a major expansion of Polarify’s customer base, will be announced as part of an Enterprise Ireland trade mission to Japan, which includes a visit by Business Minister Heather Humphreys and involves 50 Irish companies in total. A number of other Irish companies are also in discussions for new business in the Japanese market, it is understood.

Former Irish rugby player Denis Hickie, who is general manager of the ATA Group, a Cavan-based provider of specialist materials into the automotive and aviation businesses, is set to announce an expansion of its existing Japanese business.

Kitman Labs, whose CEO Stephen Smith is a former Leinster rugby coach and which counts former Irish rugby player Jamie Heaslip among its investors, is also expected to announce a further Japanese deal. In May, it announced that it had signed up Osaka-based professional rugby team NTT DoCoMo Red Hurricanes.

Kilkenny-based equine feed supplier Red Mills is also expected to announce an expansion of its business in Japan.

“Japan is a terrific market once you can overcome the hurdles to get into it,” said Pat O’Riordan, Enterprise Ireland’s head of Japan and Korea.

“It has the twin benefits of scale and sustainability because the Japanese look for long-term partners. Exports by Irish companies into Japan have risen by 73pc in the last four years.

“There may be a perception at home that the Japanese economy has underperformed in recent decades, but Japanese companies are cash-rich and it is no surprise that the Irish companies here are doing well.”

O’Riordan said that the trade mission was purposely timed to coincide with the World Cup.

“We saw it as a big opportunity; the fact that we were drawn in the same pool group as Japan, and that has proven to be the case. It has given us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get serious visibility for Ireland in Japan because, in reality, we are not well-known out here. Japanese people don’t have huge awareness of Ireland. It often gets confused for Iceland or as part of the UK.

“We weren’t planning for what happened on the pitch against Japan but if there was any upside, it is the fact that the Japanese are very focused on Ireland at the moment,” said O’Riordan.