The project, steered by Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE, Ministry of Exterior) of Mexico, is aimed to develop a passport issuing system for 2.7 million electronic passports across all 32 states in Mexico including the Federal District of Mexico City.

With the initial shipment, Suprema has supplied over 500 units of biometric and passport issuing devices, namely, the Realpass-V electronic passport reader, the Realscan-10 live scanner and Biomini fingerprint scanners. Furthermore, SRE has a plan to expand this newly-developed electronic passport issuing system to its overseas Mexican embassies and in new offices yet to be opened in Mexico.

The Realscan-10 fingerprint live scanner which captures imprints of 4-fingers and two-thumbs, replaces SRE’s existing single-finger readers to improve capturing speed and image quality of fingerprints. In addition, the Realpass-V passport reader provides a higher level of security on issuance of electronic passports and the Biomini fingerprint scanner enables biometric sign-on using pre-registered fingerprint at SRE’s nationwide passport issuance stations.

SIASA, Suprema’s exclusive partner in Mexico, supplied the products to the SRE’s bid winner in cooperation with Suprema. SIASA also provided on-site technical support in integration of Suprema products to SRE’s existing infrastructure and technical assistance during pilot tests as well as system’s demonstration. "Suprema products were easy to integrate into the customer's solution; the equipment has proved trustworthy and it has delivered as promised. SIASA is proud to assist in this high-security biometric project in the public security sector. As a result, Suprema products will definitely gain more market leadership in Mexico,” said Fernando Loret de Mola, Sales Director at SIASA.

Suprema has won a number of government-level electronic passport and biometric ID projects in the US, India, Brazil and EU countries.