It provides identity-related security services, and sells facial recognition and other biometric identification products and software to private companies and governments.

[4] In the 2020 report Out of Control[5] Amnesty International criticized Morpho for supplying "facial recognition equipment directly to the Shanghai Public Security Bureau in 2015.

In September 2016, Safran announced that it had entered into exclusive negotiations with Advent International, the owner of Oberthur Technologies since 2011, to sell its identity and security activities and the transaction was finalized on 31 May 2017.

Oberthur Technologies (OT) and Safran Identity & Security (Morpho) were joining forces to create OT-Morpho, then renamed as IDEMIA on September 28.

The company has many references in the police field or in the civil field: United States, United Arab Emirates, Albania, or India with the Aadhaar project whose objective is to provide a unique 12-digit number to each Indian citizen after enrolment of their biometric data (iris, fingerprints, portrait for 1.3 billion people) allowing these citizens to open a bank account, access microcredit or receive social benefits.

[10] On the market of states and government services, IDEMIA participates in particular in the efforts of the United Nations Organisation to give everyone an identity by 2030[11] (in Africa or India, more than 1.1 billion people still do not have a legal existence).

Thus the company carries out research such as the implementation of fingerprint recognition in the 0.8 millimeter thickness of a card or the dynamic change the visual cryptogram.

[7] IDEMIA owns IdentoGO, a company that operates hundreds of storefronts in the United States which offer "state-of-the-art electronic fingerprint capture capabilities as well as other identity-related products and services."

In 2012, Safran (Sagem) was fined €50,000 by a French court for bribing public officials in Nigeria to win a €170 million contract in 2000/03 to produce identity cards.