Abstract: A mobile, wireless biometric identification system includes a biometric capture device, associated software and processes which enable a commercially available wireless communication device, such as a smartphone, using a commercially established wireless communication networks, to capture a digital image of a human biometric (iris, fingerprint, etc.) for transmission via a secure connection to a central server. The capture device is designed to focus on the difficult task of capturing the highest possible quality image for encoding and comparison, while the overall system is designed to leverage the existing cellular communication network. At the server level, the server system receives the image, encodes the image to a biometric template, and compares the encoded template to a plurality of reference templates stored in a database to identify the individual. Identification data is then transmitted back to the smartphone device and displayed.