Weekly new briefs on Samsung committing to biometric technology; DigitalPersona announcing that New Look, a China fashion retailer, has selected a Point-of-Sale (POS) system enabled with fingerprint technology; The FIDO Alliance announced that Visa Inc. has joined; INSIDE Secure announced the launch of AT90SC28880RCFV2, a dual interface, secure microcontroller; and Fortinet, a network security provider, has invested in Centrify,

Nuance announced that Banco Santander México deployed the voice biometrics solution to replace PINs, passwords, and security questions. Santander launched Nuance’s VocalPassword solution so that customers who call in to the bank’s phone system can simply speak to be authenticated, making the banking-by-phone process easier and more secure.

Toopher is touting invisible authentication but also may have one of the coolest tag lines for an identity company out there: “cool enough for James Bond and your mom can use it too.” Once an enterprise enables a site for Toopher, a user’s mobile device can serve as a second factor of authentication.

Safenet, Gemalto, EMC, CA Technologies, Vasco Data Security and Technology Nexus are Gartner’s choices for top user authentication technology companies in its recent “Magic Quadrant for User Authentication” report. The report’s main conclusions: Perhaps 50 vendors of the 200 or so in the market have credible offerings, and the top six above account for most of the market by customer and end-user numbers.

CARTES SECURE CONNEXIONS AMERICA announced the winners of the first SESAMES America awards. Winners were awarded in identity, card manufacturing and emerging payments.

AIRSHOP enables retailers to launch their own self-branded mobile wallets for fast and advanced ordering, payment, loyalty, geo-location services and couponing. It has been deployed for retailers including KFC, Carrefour City, G20, Dia and many more.

Gemalto’s Valimo mobile eID solution will support the BankID of Norway eID project. The program is creating a nationwide system for electronic authentication and legally binding digital signatures mobile devices.