Careem, a ride hailing service in the Middle East and North Africa, has operations across 50 cities, in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon and Kuwait. After a competitive benchmarking process, the car booking app has selected Digital Barriers plc’s facial recognition software and will now integrate it into their driver smartphone application. The firms say it’s for passenger safety and security, ensuring that the actual driver of the vehicle can be matched in the background in real-time to the authorised and accredited driver. Careem will also use the facial recognition platform in driver enrolment.
In combination, these applications will ensure that Careem can provide an unprecedented level of passenger security and safety across the ride hailing sector.
Magnus Olsson, Co-founder and Chief Xperience Officer at Careem, said: “When customers rely on a ride-hailing service or any other mode of transportation to go from point A to point B, they are also placing their trust on the service provider for their safety and security. In our efforts to simplify people’s lives in the region, safety plays an unprecedented role and the integration of Digital Barriers’ facial technology will further bolster the confidence and faith our users have in the Careem brand. The biometric technology helps us strengthen our relationship with our users further by providing them with the reassurance that every Captain’s credentials are being monitored at all times through a sophisticated network. It also adds another important layer to our Captain screening process by ensuring that only those individuals with a clean track record are invited to become part of the Careem family.”
And Zak Doffman, CEO of Digital Barriers, said: “This represents the first integration of our facial recognition software into a mainstream commercial application, on a recurring revenue basis, and has demonstrated that the Group’s solution delivers a better level of performance than other providers of facial recognition solutions, whilst maintaining a competitive price point. As service providers across many industries now look to camera-embedded and smartphone application identity assurance as a key component of their business processes, the Group believes that the market for such solutions is set for very material growth over the coming years. The Group’s facial recognition software has been designed to meet the requirements of military, intelligence and law enforcement customers around the world, with more stringent requirements than more mainstream offerings. This was illustrated by the Group’s securing of a €3.5m multi-year framework contract earlier this financial year with one of Europe’s largest ministries of defence.”
