By Hironari Akiyama / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

AMSTERDAM -- Dai Nippon Printing Co. has announced that it will acquire Rubicon SEZC, a company based in the Cayman Islands that provides biometric authentication services, mainly in Africa.

The acquisition comes amid a growing need to register and manage personal information as developing countries democratize and hold elections.

DNP plans to acquire 75% of Rubicon's outstanding shares in early July to add it to its corporate group, according to the announcement made by the Japanese firm on Tuesday. It is believed the deal will cost tens of billions of yen, marking it one of the largest overseas acquisitions in the company's history.

Rubicon uses portable, compact devices to collect personal information, such as people's fingerprints and images of their face, and then issue ID cards. In developing countries, where many people do not have a fixed address, there is a growing need for biometric authentication to ensure fair elections.

In Japan, DNP controls the largest share of the manufacturing sector for smart cards such as credit cards. As the company owns advanced anti-counterfeiting technologies, such as for holograms, it saw collaboration with Rubicon yielding significant synergy.

Overseas governments are expected to increase their demand for ID-related services at an annual rate of about 15%. DNP aims to achieve total sales of 140 billion yen by fiscal 2030 through the acquisition.

"This (technology) could also be useful for issuing ID cards during disasters in Japan," said Yoshiki Numano, a senior corporate officer at DNP.

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This article is from The Yomiuri Shimbun. Neither Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, Barron's nor The Wall Street Journal were involved in the creation of this content.

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June 20, 2025 03:31 ET (07:31 GMT)

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