HID Expands Regional Availability of Its Mobile Secure Access Control Solution to Latin America, Solidifying Its Market Leading Position

In December 2024, HID announced a partnership with the Brazilian-based office management company Deskbee. Deskbee will integrate HID’s Mobile Secure Access Control technology with its workplace management platform. HID’s Mobile Secure Access Control solution is a mobile application that spans digital-only to a derived option that can be used instead of or in conjunction with a physical access control card.

Deskbee’s employees will be able to use the Mobile Secure Access Control app, essentially adding a digital access control card to their Google Wallet. This will provide a more convenient way to enter their workspace and future-proof Deskbee’s access control system, presenting flexibility to build out a host of future services tied to the digital credential.

HID has been steadily growing its presence in the secure access control market, initially adding mobile capabilities in 2014. Since then, HID has been building out the app, its capabilities, and technology support to cement its position as the market leader in the secure access control market. The mobile app currently has nearly 1 million users as of December 2024.

Prior to Deskbee, HID announced two partnerships in April 2024 for its Mobile Secure Access Control app on Google Wallet. The first is with Smart Spaces, a developer of smart building software and the second is with Cohesion, a smart building software platform, both based in London. Prior to that, the app had been available for Apple Wallet users since March 2023 when HID partnered with the City of Austin to make its city badges mobile accessible.

The latest addition to HID’s portfolio of mobile accessible clients demonstrates clear and growing interest from enterprises looking toward digitization to further streamline access control systems. The partnership with Deskbee expands HID’s influence in the Latin American market. With already half of the Brazilian population using the mobile version of its national ID card in the country, there is strong precedence for mobile access control succeeding in the region. HID is likely to find strong traction and success in pushing its Mobile Secure Access Control solution in the region.

Mobile capabilities are a significant step forward in the secure access control market. They allow greater flexibility for companies that want to bring their workspace into the modern age, providing three key advantages:

• The full lifecycle management of the mobile access control credentials is more streamlined and convenient than their physical counterparts:
  • Reduces issuance time
  • Remote management reduces the requirement for physical interactions, is able to update, and can issue, manage, and revoke remotely
• It is considered eco-friendly, reducing the requirement for Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) in digital-only approaches.
• It offers enhanced security and use of existing security features found in mobile devices and their respective digital wallets (Embedded Secure Elements (eSEs) coupled with Operating System (OS) and firmware security), alongside smartphone Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) methods, such as fingerprint and facial checks, which would be impossible or expensive to replicate on a physical secure access card.

Another key part of the process to keep in mind is the convergence of logical and physical access, which is seeing a clear trend. These two processes have been historically separated: logical access control restricts virtual access to data, digital resources, and computer networks, while physical access control restricts people’s access to physical spaces. With the advent of mobile secure access control, these two systems can be merged into a central system that manages all access control rules and workflows.  It essentially uses different types of drivers and interfaces to enforce those policies across logical and physical systems, infrastructure, and applications.

The HID Secure Mobile Access technology, initially an emerging segment of HID’s portfolio, is transitioning to become an established service. Differentiated mobile access control solutions will enable HID to target existing customers with a mobile alternative and organically grow through the acquisition of net new enterprises looking toward digitization in order to streamline systems and management processes, and to converge digital and physical access control capabilities. 

As the market leader in the secure access control space, HID’s early success with mobile and its recent push into Latin America will make it difficult to displace HID. Mobile is a natural fit for access control and potentially a technology that could displace the physical. Those active in the access control market should already be developing or have mobile solutions with equivalent capabilities in order to remain relevant in a market were digitization is beginning to have an impact on the physical.