West Malling, Kent-based digital imaging systems specialist IES Group Plc, whose shares are traded on the new Alternative Investment Market, has won an enviable reference contract from Canton, Ohio automatic teller machine king Diebold Inc. Diebold has turned to the British company for image recognition technology so that operators of teller machines can minimise fraudulent use of their machines by storing the image of the bona fide user of each card, so that the image of the user captured by the video camera in the machine does not match the stored physiognomy, the teller machine can do something very nasty – spray the suspect with indelible dye, shoot out a pair of handcuffs to grab him by the wrists, or energise the machine with an electrostatic charge. D iebold, the company into which IBM Corp offloaded its teller machine business, has 130,000 machines installed in the US that could use the technology. As a result of this deal and other developments, IES says that it intends to move up to the Full List of the London stock exchange, likely in the New Year.
