No contact – Biometrics

PT World | Annual Showcase 2026
19 Nov 2025

As passenger demand for a biometrically enabled seamless travel experience continues to rise, what are the barriers holding back the global rollout of the required technology?

I magine never needing your paper passport at the airport again. You walk in and scan your face. Your app pings with a gate number and you board. No check-in desk, no printed boarding pass and no fumbling around for documents.

This isn’t science fiction; it is the future that airlines and airports are actively working toward. The media is already anticipating it: ‘Boarding passes and check-in to be ditched in biggest shake-up of global aviation in 50 years,’ announced the Daily Mail. ‘New airport rules will get rid of boarding passes and check-in,’ said The Times.

So why aren’t we all traveling this way yet?

The tech is ready, but the data rules are not

The core of seamless travel is the digital travel credential (DTC). This is a secure, digital version of your passport, developed by ICAO, the United Nations’ aviation agency. It mirrors your physical passport in a digital form.

The problem with this is that the DTC currently bundles all your passport data together into one indivisible file. And while this works well for border and immigration control, who need access to your full identity information, for airlines it is a challenge.

They only need a small subset of your passport details – name, date of birth and sometimes nationality for certain processes. Sharing the entire file would likely violate data protection laws, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which require companies to only collect what is strictly necessary...

No contact - Biometrics - PT World | Annual Showcase 2026 - 19 Nov 2025