Touch Biometrix, a disruptive fingerprint technology company headquartered in North Wales, has appointed a Chief Innovation Officer.

Rob Van Lier has joined the St Asaph-based company, which was recently recognised as one of the Top 20 global key players in the fingerprint sensing market alongside the likes of Apple.

Rob is the latest senior appointment to Touch Biometrix, following the recruitment earlier this year of Eric Derckx as Chief Technology Officer.

Touch Biometrix was established by Dr Mike Cowin in 2017 with the aim of becoming one of the top five fingerprint sensor suppliers in the world by 2023.

Dr Cowin said:

“We are delighted to have been able to recruit someone of Rob’s calibre. His is one of the world’s leading system architects for all display technologies with a proven global track record.

“Rob will play a key role for Touch Biometrix in enabling us to quickly realise our first minimum viable product.”

He has held senior roles in product development and engineering development teams in San Diego for Qualcomm MEMS Technologies. Prior to that, he worked in various system architecture and engineering roles for Philips Mobile Display Systems. Most recently, he was developing thin film drive electronics for Amazon.

Rob said:

“I am delighted to be joining Mike and the rest of the Touch Biometrix team at such an exciting stage in the company’s development. I look forward to playing a key part in helping the company to develop its first minimum viable product.”

Dr Cowin added:

“We are developing technology that will disrupt the fingerprint sensing industry and vastly improve the user authentication experience and its level of security – completely eliminating the need for passwords when using smartphones, computers and all manner of smart objects.”

Touch Biometrix made it on to the market forecast report for the fingerprint sensing industry earlier this year. The report predicts the fingerprint sensor market is expected to grow from $4.25 billion in 2018 to $8.8 billion by 2023.

The tremendous growth in fingerprint authentication technologies is being driven by the boom in mobile payment services and the need to increase the payment threshold for secure non-contact payment systems. Indeed, it is expected that biometrics will be standard in 90% of mobile devices by 2020 generating 1.37 trillion payment and non-payment mobile device transactions.