InkSure Technologies was profiled in the November/December 2011 issue of Tax Stamp News. The profile gives an overview of InkSure's tax collection projects and highlights some of our company's successes. 

See the origional article or read a copy of the article below:

Company Profile: InkSure Taggants for Tax Collection

InkSure Technologies Inc has been working within the world of currencies, product and document security since 1999. In early 2010, the company appointed a new CEO, Tal Gilat, repositioned itself as 'The Make Sure Authority' and set out, in its words, to become the de facto leader in machine-readable taggants for security printing and holograms. So far, the company is making good progress. InkSure received a commendation at the IHMA Awards for Best Applied Security Product, and was named one of the Top 25 Suppliers of Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Security by Global Identification Magazine.

InkSure's taggants are now used in tens of billions of high security items annually. In 2011, it added to this volume by implementing its signature covert anti-counterfeiting security in several tax collection programs in Europe, Asia and Africa.

InkSure Technologies Inc is a US public company headquartered in New York City. Its revenues increased 32% in the nine month period ending September 30, 2011 from the same nine month period in 2010.

Tax stamps are an important part of InkSure's business and it finds that demand for tax stamps and similar documents are on the increase. 'The tax stamp projects in our portfolio substantially increased in 2011. In addition, our long-term projects have been generally increasing in size.  We constantly receive orders for new readers from our tax stamp partners, which indicates that the collection agencies are seeing results and are increasing their capital investments,' said Gilat.

The Security

InkSure's security solutions are based on two key technologies:

The first makes use of invisible, molecular-sized chemical markers (taggants), which are embedded into inks or solvents and applied to products by standard printing or coating methods. Taggants are highly suited for providing security against counterfeiting by way of labels, packaging, security documents and holograms, particularly since they can be incorporated into existing security features to provide a multi-faceted solution.

The second core technology is the lightweight handheld readers that can instantly identify the spectral signature of each chemical marker to determine a product's authenticity. InkSure offers a line of readers that range in functionality for this purpose. Customers can choose what functions they require based on their needs and their budget.

One of the most important components of InkSure's solutions is that they are not 'off the shelf'. Certain components are standard, but each solution, says the company, is designed specifically for each customer in order to ensure that the customer gets exactly the functionality and security that they need.

'InkSure does not simply sell readers or forensic-level taggants, we sell solutions to problems. InkSure has a proven track record of helping governments increase revenue collected from tax stamps and control marks because we provide them with an easy way to find tax evaders,' said Viktor Goldovsky, head of business development and R&D for InkSure Technologies.  

Tax Stamps and Control Marks

According to the company, it now has a track record of providing solutions that increase tax revenue from tax stamps and control marks and reduce counterfeit and illicit products. It has done so, it says, by devising creative security solutions to revenue agencies.

One example of this is a security solution that InkSure developed for one country's control mark. This control mark is actually a series of marks that look the same, expect for the identifying tax information which is printed on the mark.  The issuing government was worried about retailers buying the least-expensive marks and tampering with the tax information to make inexpensive tax marks look like expensive tax marks.

InkSure's R&D team developed a taggant-based solution that protects the identifying tax information on the control mark, thereby creating a tamper-proof document. In this case, if the base of the control mark is real but the print is fake, the mark will be identified as counterfeit.

Cars and Tax Collection

CarSure, an InkSure product released in early 2011, has opened a new area of business for InkSure, car control marks. CarSure, a currency-level reader that can authenticate documents and holograms through car windscreens, was developed with the intention to provide machine-readable authentication for registration tags, license plates and safety inspection certificates. InkSure soon discovered that there was a demand for a technology that could identify counterfeit car tax documents as well. InkSure has already implemented two projects, one in Europe and the other in Africa that use CarSure to authenticate tax marks in cars. Both projects involve tagging car tax receipts that are issued by their respective governments as stickers and placed behind car windscreens.

According to the company, CarSure has been a game changer for InkSure and has tested its limits. When Goldovsky first proposed the idea of CarSure to one of InkSure's partners, they were convinced that there would not be any demand for it because of the already existent RFID-based solutions that read documents through car windows. Most of the rest of InkSure's partners thought it was technically impossible.

The reason for the scepticism is that traditional taggant technology is unreliable in extreme sunlight and weather conditions, something that a product like CarSure would have to endure on a regular basis. To get around the problem, InkSure developed a special group of weather-proof taggants and a weather-proof reader based on a less conventional optical (taggant) technology. Goldovsky and the rest of the InkSure team were able to make CarSure a reality and the solution is now available for a fraction of the price of RFID-based solutions.

Tax Collection with Barcodes

Countries are increasingly incorporating barcodes into tax stamps and tax marks in order to help governments track the movement of the goods that are taxed. InkSure offers a combined solution that provides both track & trace and authentication benefits in one click from one reader, versus the single tracking solutions offered by barcodes. This is achieved with ScanSure, a combination of authentication and track & trace reader released by InkSure earlier this year (see TSN Vol Vol 3, No 3).  

One of InkSure's running tax collection projects is utilizing ScanSure to authenticate control marks for high-end electronics. The control marks feature a hologram and barcode side-by-side which can now read and be analyzed with ScanSure. In one click, ScanSure tells the inspector if the tax mark in question is counterfeit, diverted or was copied by a contractor.

Looking to the Future

InkSure has, says Gilat, experienced significant growth over the last year despite a challenging global economy. Revenues and sales have increased and the company has been able to expand into new markets. The company plans to maintain this trend by continuing development in car document authentication and barcode solutions for tax stamps and other documents.