[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] Data-focused company Hecto Data said on Tuesday it will add passport recognition support to its ID and document OCR (Optical Character Recognition) service.

The company said Hecto Data's OCR service focuses on IDs and documents frequently used for authentication and business operations. With the addition of passport recognition, its ID OCR supports 4 types in total: resident registration cards, alien registration cards, driver's licenses and passports. Its document OCR supports corporate registry certificates, corporate seal certificates and business registration certificates (individual and corporate).

Hecto Data also rolled out liveness and face-match services to make it easier for corporate customers to adopt non-face-to-face identity verification processes. Liveness is a technology that identifies whether the subject is a real person, rather than a photo or screen image, at the facial recognition stage. It compares the recognized face with the photo on an ID such as a passport to verify whether they are the same person.

Hecto Data's OCR service is provided in API (application programming interface) form through its developer center.

Hecto Data provides AI-based sample code to support customers in integrating the API into their service environments. The AI sample code automatically generates, in real time, code that developers can refer to when integrating the API and service.

Finance, commerce and platform services aimed at global users that require sign-ups or identity verification can link passport OCR with liveness and face match. This allows them to adopt a non-face-to-face identity verification process, from confirming passport information to verifying whether the user is a real person and validating an ID, without building a separate OCR engine.

A Hecto Data official said, "With this service expansion, we have built an authentication API lineup that goes beyond OCR for recognizing IDs and documents to enable passport information verification and face-based identity checks." The official added, "We will continue to enhance our own AI technology competitiveness and keep expanding developer-friendly data and authentication API services that customers can use more easily and quickly."