Shares of T Stamp Inc. IDAI, +8.25% blasted 171.9% higher on very heavy volume in premarket trading Thursday, enough to make the stock the biggest gainer on major U.S. exchanges, after the identity services company announced the launch of its Biometric Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) product that provides identity assurance with a selfie. Trading volume ballooned to 7.0 million shares, compared with the full-day average of about 21,700 shares. The company said its Biometric MFA can be used wherever current one-time passcodes (OTP) are deployed in an authentication process, and adds a second and third authentication factor with one step. It tests liveness and tokenizing data from a selfie, which eliminates the need for passcodes from SMS, email, authenticator apps or hardware tokens. “Passwords and passcodes aren’t enough to ensure that genuine, authorized users are accessing their own accounts or initiating transactions,” said Chief Commercial Officer Kinny Chan. “Biometric MFA lets partners layer intuitive, convenient, and seamless identity authentication where vulnerable passcodes are used today.” The stock has tumbled 47.5% year to date through Wednesday, while the S&P 500 SPX, +0.21% has lost 12.2%.
