Vision-Box strengthens strategic partnership with home affairs

Aiming to provide solutions for an ever-improved passenger experience across all airports in Australia, Vision-Box, the leading provider of biometric-based travel and digital identity solutions, has entered into an extended five-year contract with the Department of Home Affairs for Departure SmartGate services, reinforcing its long-term strategic partnership. 

In the short term, the focus will be on the extension of the Support & Maintenance agreement until June 2026 together with some innovation in the area of Departures SmartGates for Automated Border Control. Vision-Box will support Home Affairs in implementing several initiatives that improve the operational efficiency of border processes.

Mark Hilton, Vision-Box Managing Director APAC, hailed: “As air traffic in Australia continues to intensify, Vision-Box is proud to enhance its support to Home Affairs to facilitate travel at the border and beyond. This extended partnership has efficiency at the core of what is our mid-term innovative and strategic vision for the country, with immediate focus on Departures SmartGates technology.”

With Asia-Pacific in the driver’s seat of a growing aviation industry − IATA suggests passenger numbers could double up to 8.2 billion by 2037 – biometric-enabled automated border control is the primary means by which the Australian government plans to tackle its expected seven per cent annual growth in traveller numbers.

Vision-Box’s award-winning Advanced Border Control platform is at the kernel of the departures programme, with additional capabilities to support the enhancement initiatives Home Affairs aims at exploring.

The relationship between Vision-Box and Australia’s Department of Home Affairs was initially sustained by a very successful programme that began in 2015, after the Australian government selected the company to provide biometric border control SmartGates at all airports’ departures.

This programme extension, celebrated through the establishment of a strategic partnership, is foreseen as a critical cornerstone of the future of border control and efficient travel in the country, at the benefit of the entire aviation ecosystem with the passenger at its epicentre.