The world's first pre-flight biometric digital ID verification for contactless border crossing - Curaçao Express Pass – has launched
The new biometric solution was deployed by the government of Curaçao in conjunction with Curaçao Airport Holding. Curaçao Express Pass is powered by Airside, part of Entrust company, the industry leader in privacy-based digital identity sharing and Vision-Box, which was recently acquired by Amadeus.
Branded ‘A Seamless Experience,’ the Curaçao Express Pass is designed to revolutionise the travel experience through advanced biometrics, process orchestration and interoperable digital ID verification technologies.
According to Vision-Box, Curaçao Express Pass heralds ‘an innovative air border programme’ that ensures a smooth, end-to-end travel experience for visitors to the Caribbean island of Curaçao.
Developed through a collaborative multi-stakeholder partnership, the pass enables a privacy-first common share of data between the different platforms. It ensures that all parties are synchronised and interoperable for optimal efficiency and security and offers robust support for decentralised digital identity verification and traveller orchestration for the benefit of a human-centric process.
“Our goal is to realise a free-flow journey for all passengers travelling to and from Curaçao. Ten years ago, when this project started, we had long queue lines and a manual immigration process. After years of collaborating with the Ministry of Justice to structurally tackle the inefficiencies, we believe that Curaçao Express Pass will make queues a thing of the past. As the airport owner and supervisor of the airport operator, we take great pride in knowing that the pass enables operational efficiency for immigration and allows passengers to have an improved experience in our airport,” said Wilhelmus Ignacio, director, Curaçao Airport Holding.
Utilising the Curaçao Express Pass, travellers verify and share their electronic passport and biometric information with the immigration system before arrival, using their smartphones. Pre-enrolment occurs in the Airside Digital Identity App, which provides e-passport verification, biometric facial recognition, and consent-driven, time-bound sharing. Travellers then access an expedited immigration lane upon arrival, where the Vision-Box Seamless Gates and the orchestration platform, the Vision-Box Seamless Journey Platform, perform facial matching from the app enrolment, allowing travellers to simply walk through immigration upon police backends’ clearance.
