The tax stamp started life as a piece of paper that was almost the same for every product, but that soon evolved into different designs for different products, says Swiss company U-NICA, a leading provider of product and brand value protection solutions.
Modern day tax stamps have a variety of looks and protective components similar to other security products. The different shapes and sizes of modern tax stamps are a great illustration of how much tax stamps as a whole have evolved over the years.
U-NICA describes why it thinks multi-layered security is the best form of protection and then talks about its vision for tax stamps.
Due to the digital revolution, governments have had to incorporate different anti-counterfeit elements into tax stamps. These elements, combined together, are extremely difficult for counterfeiters to reproduce. Tax stamps might not have been created with anti-counterfeit strategies in mind, but now, looking back at their history, one could say that the start of anti-counterfeit solutions grew from the need to collect taxes and stop illicit trade.
U-NICA’s multi-layered anti-counterfeit strategy is based on the security level pyramid. This pyramid has three anti- counterfeit protection levels, or layers, which governments implement into tax stamps.
The first level is the most obvious security measure because it can be verified by the human senses such as sight or touch.
This next security layer is geared specifically for simple devices, making authentication by the naked human eye impossible.
Consumers might see the anti-counterfeit element, but they won’t be able to verify it.
The last anti-counterfeit level is the strictest level, and only reserved for government use. This layer involves the use of actual forensic tools, such as laboratory equipment, to verify the tax stamp.
In this digital world, U-NICA implements various visible and invisible security features such as Pixelcloud and surTRACE, which fall under the scryptoTRACE umbrella, making it possible to check the genuineness of tax stamps with one single smartphone app. These are U-NICA’s proprietary security elements that fulfill all three layers of the security level pyramid.
The company describes its focus on digital solutions as an enhancement of available physical security features, with all the digital advantages.
For better product protection in the digital world, specific and system-detailed customisations, such as privacy regulations, are available to fine tune the whole tax stamp solution. Furthermore, tax stamp monitoring over the complete life cycle, as well as secured label design management, and U-NICA’s track and trace solution, are available for each tax stamp.
