Last Updated on Friday, 4 December, 2020 at 9:32 am by Andre Camilleri
Billions of people who are unable to assert their identity are excluded from the global square both financially and socially and are being limited from achieving their full potential. Beyond empowering individual prosperity, enabling inclusion of these large populations has the potential to positively impact many nations at various societal, economic, educational, technological, legal, political and not least, financial levels. Trust Stamp has established a subsidiary in Malta specifically with the aim of furthering research and development (R&D) in support of such life-changing services. The Malta Business Weekly interviewed the company’s CEO, GARETH GENNER and Research Lead, DR LEANNE ATTARD
What is Trust Stamp?
Trust Stamp is a global artificial intelligence (AI) company focussed on identity. We are headquartered in both the United States and the United Kingdom and have offices in five countries, the most recent of which is our Maltese subsidiary located in Sliema. Trust Stamp’s core technology turns biometric and other identifying data into unique Irreversibly Transformed Identity Tokens, called (IT)2s, that are safe to use, store and share as secure identifiers, anywhere in the world.
With growing initiatives in emerging markets, our team works to deliver cutting-edge identity solutions to the most unreached of the world. We envision a future where every human being, regardless of location or connectivity, can prove their identity. This opens doors of access to essential services like healthcare, education and humanitarian aid, all of which present the opportunity for social and economic mobility. This is one of the reasons we have teamed up with Malta’s science and arts festival, Science in the City, whose mission focusses on empowering individual advancement, a core concept in Trust Stamp’s cross-industry mission.
What has attracted you to Malta?
Trust Stamp identified shared areas of interest early into our discussions with organisations in Malta and we were attracted to their commitment to growing the country’s technology industry and driving global innovation. We are working with partners across government and private industry, to secure societal and financial inclusion. Malta’s human resources comprise bright young minds in science and technology, which present an opportunity for advancement while allowing us to contribute to the growing tech community. These factors ultimately led to the launch of Trust Stamp Malta.
While Trust Stamp Malta is our largest innovation hub with over 20 employees to date, we plan to grow organically as demands for our privacy-preserving biometric identity services increase. Across the company, Trust Stamp has a team of more than 60 experienced developers, artificial intelligence and machine-learning engineers, data scientists and business leaders that work to address pressing needs in the identity space, from enterprise data security to humanitarian aid distribution.
What are your plans in Malta?
We plan to grow further in Malta. Trust Stamp continues to offer educational and professional opportunities to Malta-based persons that are interested in pursuing careers in ground-breaking areas of science and technology. In the beginning of November, we celebrated the first eight graduates of our trainee programme and we are proud to say that each chose to join the Trust Stamp team as full-time junior developers. We are on a constant lookout for the skills and passion that help us in developing and supporting emerging innovations.
How can Trust Stamp contribute towards significantly reducing, if not eliminating, fraud concerning identity documents?
Data protection is core to our technology, across both commercial and humanitarian uses. Trust Stamp’s unique data transformation and comparison capabilities can establish a user’s identity, verify their authenticity and pinpoint instances of possible fraud, all without needing to expose sensitive information.
Our innovations enable organisations to serve their customers more effectively and reach a broader base of users worldwide. With advanced transformation algorithms, deep neural networks and other leading AI, the same solutions can be used to protect privacy, enhance security and enable access for individuals in a variety of different contexts.
Trust Stamp is based at Level 1, Tagliaferro Business Centre, High Street, Sliema.
