Digimarc and Honeywell Partner to Combat Gift Card Fraud and Streamline the Checkout Experience

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11/24/2025 - 08:00 AM

Honeywell will integrate Digimarc’s latest on-scanner software across its handheld retail scanners by early 2026, enabling retailers to better protect customers and speed up checkout operations.

BEAVERTON, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ: DMRC), a leading provider of digital identity and authentication technologies, and Honeywell (NASDAQ: HON) have teamed up to help retailers and brands fight gift card fraud. The global gift card market was valued at $1.24 trillion in 2024 and is expected to reach $2.31 trillion by 2030, making it a growing target for bad actors.¹ Gift card fraud losses grew 364% from 2018 to 2021 and continue to increase year over year.² With 23% of consumers in the U.S. having given or received gift cards with no funds on them, gift card fraud is now a persistent problem.³

Honeywell is one of the first manufacturers to configure its handheld scanners to detect Digimarc’s new digital security layer for gift cards, enabling retailers around the world to automate detection of tampered cards and prevent their activation at the point of sale. Digimarc’s end-to-end solution is over three times more secure than “card-only” security features and removes the need for cashiers to manually inspect or otherwise prepare cards prior to scanning.⁴ Retailers using this solution report dramatically lowered incidents of fraud and faster gift card scanning, thereby improving the customer experience, making retail associates’ jobs easier, and bringing greater security and more seamless operations to the entire gift card ecosystem.

“Honeywell has been a great collaborator in preparing for broader retailer adoption of our next generation gift card solution,” said Ken Sickles, Digimarc’s Chief Product Officer. “The Honeywell Xenon XP™ 1950 was one of the first handheld scanners in production with our current on-scanner software. Equally important, Honeywell has been an invaluable partner as we developed our latest version of that software, which we released in November 2025.”

Honeywell has committed to rolling out this newest version of Digimarc software across its flagship handheld retail scanner portfolio by early 2026. “Digimarc and Honeywell understand that retailers and consumers demand excellent fraud protection, as well as a seamless checkout experience,” explained Sickles. “The latest version of our on-scanner software delivers a step-change improvement in tamper evidence and first-pass read rates, creating more robust fraud protection and greater scanning speed and efficiency at checkout.”

“Gift card fraud is a serious, pervasive and increasingly costly problem for retailers,” said David Barker, president of Honeywell Productivity Solutions & Services. “Honeywell is committed to delivering best-in-class solutions to protect retailers, brands and consumers. To this end, we look forward to incorporating the latest version of Digimarc’s on-scanner software in even more of our scanner models early next year to offer best-in-class fraud protection and deliver customers frictionless checkout experiences.”

Retail customers can contact Digimarc or Honeywell to request demonstrations and explore how to integrate this fraud reduction technology into their workflows. Honeywell will also be showcasing the Digimarc solution alongside all their retail scanning solutions at the NRF show (Booth# 3538) in January 2026.

About Digimarc

Digimarc (NASDAQ: DMRC) is building the trust layer for the modern world. As AI accelerates how we produce, share, and interact with the world, the risks of fraud, counterfeiting, and misinformation are growing exponentially. Our innovative, highly scalable, and ultra-secure solutions make it possible for consumers, businesses, and intelligent systems to instantly verify what’s real, protect what matters, and transact with confidence. Digimarc’s solutions for loss prevention, authentication, and digital are built to counter the speed and sophistication of today’s AI-enabled threats. Trusted by the world’s central banks to deter the counterfeiting of global currency, we exist to protect truth in every interaction, spanning both the physical and digital worlds. Learn more at Digimarc.com.

About Honeywell

Honeywell is an integrated operating company serving a broad range of industries and geographies around the world, with a portfolio that is underpinned by our Honeywell Accelerator operating system and Honeywell Forge platform. As a trusted partner, we help organizations solve the world's toughest, most complex challenges, providing actionable solutions and innovations for aerospace, building automation, industrial automation, process automation, and process technology, that help make the world smarter and safer as well as more secure and sustainable. For more news and information on Honeywell, please visit www.honeywell.com/newsroom.

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¹ Gift Card Statistics (2025): Market Size & Consumer Trends
² Gift Card Statistics (2025): Market Size & Consumer Trends
³ Gift Card Statistics (2025): Market Size & Consumer Trends
⁴ https://www.digimarc.com/resources/guides-papers/digimarc-risk-intelligence-gift-cards