Plain answers for security managers weighing up Laminate, and for anyone asked to enroll with it. Each answer starts with the short version.
Laminate is credentialing and tactical access control for places where access is temporary and the people change, run on ordinary iPads and iPhones.
You lay out the site as zones, bring in the people you expect and enroll them; at the gate, an iPad or iPhone checks each person by face or by a tap of their NFC wristband. It covers both halves of the job, credentialing before people arrive and access management on the day, and the features page walks through each part.
Laminate is for security teams whose work moves: live production on tour or at a festival, executive protection, film and TV sets, and secure construction sites.
Those four are examples, not limits. Event security for a single night and crew and contractor access on a building site have the same shape: access is temporary and the people change, and that is the work Laminate fits. What changes for each is set out on who it’s for.
Event credentialing is the work of confirming who each person is, collecting what they owe, such as signed agreements and ID, and issuing the credential that lets them in where they belong.
It is also spelled credentialling, and some industries call it accreditation. In Laminate, people do much of it from a link on their own phone before they arrive, and the credentialing desk finishes what is left, such as a photo, a signature, ID or a wristband.
No, Laminate informs the person at the gate, and that person decides who comes through.
At a gate, the iPad shows green when someone is expected and orange when they need a second look, never a red screen. A face it does not recognize is not a verdict; where wristbands are in use, the screen asks for a tap instead. Laminate does not open or lock doors.
Mostly not: Laminate runs on iPads and iPhones with iOS 16 or later, plus NTAG424 DNA wristbands if you issue them.
Each device works as a scanner, a gate or a badging desk. An iPhone reads wristbands with its own NFC, an iPad pairs with a supported Bluetooth wristband reader, and a gate can add an optional, supported Neewer light to light faces.
Yes, the checks at the gate run on the iPad or iPhone itself, so they do not wait on the network and keep working offline.
Face matching and the wristband check both happen on the device, and changes made in the console reach a device when it reconnects. Devices keep what they hold encrypted, and a device that cannot reconnect for a set time wipes what it holds and stops using it.
Each area of the site becomes a zone, the perimeter included, with its own rule for who gets in, called a posture.
You can change a posture by hand, and Laminate first shows who the change will affect, or schedule the change for a set time, to apply on its own or to ask first. Each posture switch is kept as a signed record of who made it, and when.
Each NFC wristband holds only identifiers, no name or photo, and every tap is cryptographically verified on the iPad or iPhone that reads it.
Staff at the credentialing desk issue the bands. An iPhone reads one with its own NFC and an iPad with a paired Bluetooth reader, and you can extend or revoke a person’s band from their page in the console.
Yes, connect a Google Sheet and Laminate reads it again every hour, or bring people in from a CSV or Excel (.xlsx) file.
You say which of your own columns holds the name, group, company and email, and your headings stay as they are. With a connected Google Sheet, Laminate also writes each person’s enrollment status, and whether they have been seen on site, back into columns of its own.
Yes, your organization can connect the assistant it already uses, such as Claude or ChatGPT, to find people, check who can get in where and make everyday changes.
Laminate never gives it photos, face data, ID document numbers, signatures, wristband identifiers or watchlists; making changes is a separate permission you choose, and every change is recorded. Laminate has no chatbot or language model of its own.
No, it is your choice: if you are invited to enroll, your face is learned only after you have been shown what face recognition involves and said yes.
Laminate’s servers learn your face from your photo, and the face data is sent, encrypted, to the devices at that project’s doors, where the matching happens. Your face data is used only for the project you were invited to.
Your face is not learned, and where wristbands are issued, you are identified by your wristband instead.
You can say Not now at the desk, or leave it undone on your sign-up link. Your photo is kept either way, so the person on the door can compare it with you, and if you change your mind later, your face is learned from that same photo.
Your photo is stored encrypted, with Amazon Web Services, and is kept until the project closes, 90 days after its last day by default.
Staff with access to the organization’s console can see it, and the devices at its doors hold an encrypted copy so the person on the door can compare it with you. Photos of an ID document that Laminate holds are deleted sooner, seven days after your last scheduled day by default. If the organization uses an ID check from Didit or Stripe Identity, you photograph your ID document and yourself with that company, under the organization’s own account with it.
Yes, you can withdraw your consent to face recognition at any time, and you can ask the organization that invited you to erase your information.
To withdraw, tell the person at the desk or use your sign-up link, where Laminate emails you a code to confirm it is you; your face data is deleted from Laminate’s servers straight away, and devices stop using it when they next connect. If the organization erases you, your photo, face data, ID details, contact details, signed agreements and what its people list said about you are deleted, and your own key is destroyed. Your name and the records of what happened at the doors and desks, including any alert or snapshot picture taken there, stay until the project closes, and backups keep a copy for up to seven days.
Your face data and ID details are encrypted under a key that belongs to you alone, and your name, photo and contact details are encrypted as well.
Each organization’s records are kept apart by the database itself, and servers, stored files and backups are hosted with Amazon Web Services. How we protect your data explains each part in plain words and in detail.
Laminate’s support staff can open an organization’s console to help it, through support access that is read-only and ends after 60 minutes.
The organization can switch support access off, which ends any open session at once, and every session is recorded with the pages it opened, in a record the organization can see. Within the organization, administrators and managers use the console, and desk staff sign in at a station with their own PIN.
Talk to us: tell us what you are looking after, when, and roughly how many people, and we will get back to you by email.
If your organization already uses Laminate, log in to the console.
