Last week Sberbank, Russia’s national savings bank, announced an investment in VisionLabs, a Russian startup specializing in facial recognition, data analysis and robotics.
The deal, the terms of which remain undisclosed, aims to support VisionLabs’ expansion on the international markets, including Europe, the USA and Asia. Sberbank has acquired a 25.07% stake, the remaining shares belonging to the company’s founders and venture fund Sistema_VC. The transaction was conducted through Sberbank’s internal structure, the Digital Business Development Administration.
Sberbank sees the transaction as “a major first step to build a biometrics platform,” which will include “face, voice and retina identification, as well as other biometric factors.” The bank will use VisionLabs’ solution as the basis for its “unique biometric identifier that will let Sberbank clients access any service.”
The technology will be used both within Sberbank’s ecosystem and be available to a wider market.
Verifying customers
Dubbed ‘Luna’, this solution allows businesses to “verify and identify customers instantly” based on photo or video images, thanks to a “unique quality and performance pattern recognition technology.”
This award-winning technology has attracted the attention of Google and Facebook. These companies have supported VisionLabs’ efforts to develop professional communities in the fields of computer vision and neural networks.
Following a series of tests, Lev Khasis, First Deputy Chairman of the bank’s executive board, touted the technology as “the world leader.
