United Kingdom
WorldReach’s relationship with the UK Government began with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 2001. FCO had the requirement for a consular database system to improve the quality of consular service as well as meet the anticipated increase in demand for consular protection services.
Since 2009, the FCO has depended on WorldReach for BRIDGE, a proven, flexible and cost-effective solution for the UK’s overseas Emergency Travel Documents issuance, based on the PassportReach core.
In 2014, the British Overseas Territories and Her Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO) embarked on a programme to introduce electronic passports to the Territories. Building on experience with providing Temporary Passports (TPs) and Emergency Travel Documents (ETDs) with the FCO BRIDGE consular passport system installed in the United Kingdom’s diplomatic missions, WorldReach was well qualified and a very good technical fit for the project. With overall costs, relatively low passport issuance volumes and data security in mind as key considerations, the Territories chose WorldReach’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) PassportReach solution. This marked the first implementation of a secure, Cloud-based issuance system for any country or territory.
In 2018, WorldReach Software signed a multi-year, multi-million GBP contract with the UK Home Office for the provision of a smartphone based digital enrollment capability supporting the EU Settlement Scheme. This new digital service allows identity verification to be done remotely using smartphone apps including ePassport chip reading and authentication, biometric facial matching and liveness detection. IdentityReach is an the core of this innovative identity and document verification solution.
As of December 2020, more than 4.3 Million applications to the EU Settlement Scheme had been completed. This makes it the world’s largest, most successful mobile identity and document verification system of its kind.
