I asked three AI tools (CoPilot, Gemini, and ChatGPT) what the top 5 trends in employee badges were for 2025. Here is what they agreed on:
- Mobile Credentials – traditional badge systems are evolving to support mobile solutions. This capability is rapidly evolving in higher education and starting to catch on in general business as a convenient way to deploy access control.
- Biometrics – facial recognition and fingerprint scans are increasingly being used as a second layer of security for access control systems and logging onto secure systems.
- Interactive Badges – badges equipped with NFC and RFID are being used more than ever before to incorporate door access, time and attendance tracking, cashless payments, and interact with IoT systems to track workflows within a building.
- Cloud-Managed – as badging platforms move to the cloud, teams responsible for badging have more control over credentials across different physical sites, making it easy to maintain badge consistency and brand identity.
- Sustainability – As more organizations are prioritizing environmental responsibility, badges made from recycled or biodegradable materials are becoming more popular and easier to find.
So far, all of these trends are enhancements to the physical badge, and all indications are that a physical badge will not completely disappear. A physical badge is still the best form of visual identification and is required in many people-facing industries like healthcare, government, and education.
As companies try to safeguard their systems, two-factor authentication is becoming more and more pervasive in every area of our lives. Physical IDs, just like birth certificates, are an important form of identification, making it easy to identify if a person belongs or not.
What do you think AI missed as a trend in employee badging for 2025?