INCM - Art to Machine Readable Coding

The Portuguese Mint and Official Printing Office, INCM SA, in a presentation by Nuno Gonçalves at the recent Tax Stamp Forum^™ in Budapest, described its new coding system, but unlike other such systems, this one, UNIQODE^®, is artistically as well as technically innovative. (Patents are pending.)

UNIQODE is the outcome of an innovation project with the University of Coimbra, established for the design of security elements able to be validated by ubiquitous mobile devices.

The objective was to develop a unique identifier with several levels of security involving both the physical and digital levels, which was completely configurable with excise tax stamps as well as being aimed at the consumer market. The primary objective was that the identifier should be readable by smartphones, enabling both authorities and consumers to validate the identifier and, consequently, the excise stamp and/or product at any place in the supply chain.

The important aspects of the solution are that the coded information has several levels of security (private, public and encrypted), the aesthetics are highly improved, it has a high capacity to code long messages, it has unique patterns and, being efficient and fast, is suitable for real-time applications.