Welcome to your first issue of Tax Stamp & Authentication News™ (TSAN). This 12-page monthly newsletter merges Reconnaissance’s previous newsletters Authentication & Brand News™ and Tax Stamp & Traceability News™ into a single publication that reflects the convergence of markets, technologies, and policies related to revenue mobilisation, brand protection and product traceability.
You will find in this inaugural issue several articles providing concrete examples of what we mean by ‘convergence’ in this context.
These include:
- ANY Security Printing’s collaboration with Bosch Secure Authentication to create a multilevel security code for tax stamps. A major component of this solution is Bosch’s surface pattern identification technology. While this technology was originally developed for inhouse use on automotive components, it is now extending to tax stamps, as well as other, external applications. This is a textbook example of authentication technology developed for brand protection migrating into the tax stamp domain.
- In another partnership, Koenig & Bauer Vision & Protection and Schwarz Druck have launched their ‘protected at print’ initiative for integrating smartphone-readable authentication and traceability solutions into the design of tax stamps, ID documents, controlled product labels, and other secure documents.
- Researchers from Saudi Arabia and Egypt have developed a thermochromic ink based on ‘selfhealing’ hydrogels, which solves the durability problem commonly encountered with thermochromics. This is interesting news for providers of security prints like tax stamps, postage stamps, event tickets, and controlled brand labels, where simple, low-cost, visible authentication features are vital.
- The International Tax Stamp Association is concerned that a European draft standard for digital product passports (DPPs) has been weakened by the removal of references to physical authentication elements. Given that DPPs are intended to cover nearly all physical products placed on the EU market – including, potentially, tobacco products – they represent a major policy driver for convergence.
- In Pakistan, the Federal Board of Revenue is expanding its tax stamp and production monitoring system beyond tobacco, sugar, fertiliser, and cement to the tile manufacturing sector, with a recent invitation to bid for an end-to-end traceability and authentication solution (although we have since learned that this has been cancelled). This continued expansion of tax stamps into non-traditional product categories shows how revenue mobilisation, compliance monitoring, and authentication are increasingly intertwined – broadening the playing field well beyond classic excise.
- US Customs and Border Protection has partnered with the Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement (AGMA) to deploy ‘One Device’ – a smartphone-based platform that authenticates multiple brands and product lines in real time. This demonstrates the need for a single, homologous authentication infrastructure capable of verifying multiple products across sectors, much like how a national tax stamp system provides a unified authentication and control framework for excisable goods.
- Septillion Technologies has secured funding to accelerate deployment of its electronics traceability platform – the first blockchain platform to fully comply with international standards – in partnership with a leading electronics manufacturer. This partnership demonstrates how commercial supply chain traceability is converging with regulatory compliance, a trend that parallels the evolution of national tax stamp and traceability systems.
The stories in this issue make one thing clear: authentication, traceability, and tax stamp systems are converging into a single ecosystem. Technologies developed for brand protection are being applied to fiscal control, regulatory frameworks like the DPP are driving harmonisation across sectors, and both governments and private industry are moving toward unified, interoperable systems for product security and compliance.
By merging Authentication & Brand News and Tax Stamp & Traceability News, TSAN reflects this new reality – providing a single, authoritative platform to help you navigate the shifting landscape of technologies, regulations, and market strategies shaping our industry.
