TheChek News Flow

TSA updates have helped it rival Clear’s membership-based verification service; Clear aims to further cut waits with new technology

Both Clear and the Transportation Security Administration are upgrading technology and adding new services, seeking to move travelers through airport security more quickly.

Clear has introduced new biometric scanning that saves users of the service a step in getting through security screening.

TSA’s Touchless ID expedites verification, averaging six to eight seconds compared with 18 to 20 seconds for other travelers.

Kelly Lomax and his co-workers decided to try a race while passing through a security checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport earlier this year.

One tried the regular Transportation Security Administration line. Another tried the TSA PreCheck Touchless ID option. Lomax went with Clear YOU -2.33%decrease; red down pointing triangle, an identity-verification service that has become ubiquitous in airports over the past decade and a half.

Lomax, a longtime Clear member who also has TSA PreCheck, was surprised to be the last one through. “When your expectation is, I’m paying a premium to move faster through the line, the expectation and reality kind of clash,” said the 47-year-old logistics executive.

For years, Clear has been the fast lane through airport security—an extra layer of insurance for making your flight. TSA has often been a crapshoot, risking pileups as travelers pulled laptops from carry-ons and novice vacationers struggled to untie their sneakers.

Recently, though, TSA has taken steps to move those snaking lines more quickly. Travelers no longer have to slip off their shoes, and the agency has expanded its own facial recognition technology. Some travelers say the improvements give Clear tougher competition.

Clear aims to get faster too, recently introducing a new biometric scanning system that saves travelers a step. It opens directly to the spot with the baggage belt, rather than requiring an additional stop where a TSA officer checks IDs.

Kyle McLaughlin, Clear’s executive vice president of aviation, said customers will keep paying for the premium service. “There has long been a demand for predictability and frictionless experiences in travel,” he said.

The Clear view

Speed and convenience are core to Clear’s appeal. The New York-based company gets most of its revenue—which totaled $770.5 million last year—from subscriptions to its consumer-aviation subscription service, Clear Plus, according to corporate filings.

Clear Plus membership costs $209 annually for an individual and $125 for each additional family member. The company reported there were 7.6 million active Clear Plus members in June, up from about 7.1 million the year before.

The company doesn’t break out how many memberships come from credit-card issuers that offer the service as a perk for cardholders, like American Express Platinum.

As the cost has climbed over the years, there are signs that some Clear customers are reassessing the service. Annual usage rates fell 5% over the 12 months ended June 30, Clear has said, while the number of passengers screened by TSA rose 1.4%. The share of members who stick with Clear rather than canceling has declined for the past two years.

The company says its overall member base is healthy and that declining usage rates reflect its growing customer base, which includes more leisure travelers who might not fly as often.

If Rob Bigbee sees a Clear line at the airport, the 57-year-old project manager from Norman, Okla., uses it. “Usually it is faster, so that makes it worthwhile,” he said.

Clear is also looking beyond airport security, recently introducing concierge services that, for $99 or $179 per use, offer assistance from the airport curb to security or the gate. The company elsewhere has expanded into identity verification for healthcare, real-estate and job services.

A faster TSA

TSA in July brought an end to decades of fumbling with shoelaces and pit stops at benches when it announced new procedures that allow passengers to keep their shoes on while passing through airport security. Travelers rejoiced—and TSA lines picked up some speed.

At some airports, TSA has separately introduced a “family lane” for security screening, intended to help parents with children while speeding up traditional screening lines.

TSA has also updated its PreCheck line. Airlines have worked with the agency to develop a biometric process that expedites verification. Touchless ID allows eligible travelers to get past the security officer in an average of six to eight seconds, compared with 18 to 20 seconds for other travelers, TSA said.

Clear offers TSA PreCheck enrollment as an add-on to its service, and most of Clear’s members have both, said Clear’s McLaughlin.

This means many people have the choice between using TSA PreCheck; Clear, available in 60 airports nationwide; or the Touchless ID lines, available at 17 airports.

On a Wednesday afternoon in early August, Mike Phipps stood behind 10 others in the Clear lane at an Austin, Texas, airport. He waited, not moving much for five minutes, when another traveler left the Clear lane and headed for TSA PreCheck, sailing through.

“I was still in line and canceled my Clear membership,” the 35-year-old sales manager said. The TSA Touchless PreCheck line, he says, is much faster.

An eGated community

Peter Neffenger, a former TSA administrator who has since consulted for Clear, said the service’s utility in the airport had seemed murky a few years ago as TSA improved its technology. TSA under the Biden administration had also conducted more secondary ID checks of Clear passengers, slowing it down.

Clear said that random ID checks, important for security, have returned to standard levels, improving the experience. And in recent months, TSA has touted public-private partnerships, including with Clear.

The company installed new biometric “eGates” in Atlanta; Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and New York. The eGate opens directly to the spot where travelers load their bags and proceed through the body scanner. TSA maintains operational control of the gates.

The eGates solve a longstanding headache for Clear users. Previously, Clear representatives have had to escort travelers to a TSA officer, who grants access to the screening area. Clear says eGates take less than five seconds to use, on average.

Lomax, the logistics executive traveling through Atlanta, gets one membership in Clear through his credit card, and his family pays for another. When the latter came up for renewal over the summer, Lomax’s wife wondered—since TSA no longer required shoe removal, did it still make sense?

The eGates persuaded Lomax to stick with Clear. “It feels like everything that set Clear apart prior to this eGate was getting chipped away at,” he said.

The servers manage digital services from restaurant recommendations to travel hacks, and will be installed in a 1,300-tonne underwater data cabin – equivalent to the weight of 1,000 passenger cars – after the first phase of construction was completed in Lingshui county this year.

“We put the entire data cabin in the deep sea because seawater can help cool down the temperature,” Pu Ding, project manager at Shenzhen HiCloud Data Centre Technology, told the Chinese media outlet Financial News.

“Compared to land-based data centres, data centres under the sea can reduce energy consumption needed for cooling, helping to lower operational costs.”

Each cabin, located 35 metres (114.8 feet) underwater, contains 24 server racks capable of hosting 400 to 500 servers, according to Financial News.

Under Hainan’s fourteenth five-year plan, the province proposed building a subsea data centre featuring 100 data cabins. The project is central to an integrated industrial estate focused on developing new technologies for the blue economy.

Amid intensifying technological competition with the United States, China launched a pilot programme in 2024 allowing full foreign ownership of data centres and value-added telecoms services in Hainan and three other hubs: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

“This policy update is a response to mounting global demand for data centre services fuelled by advances in generative AI and cloud computing,” said Giulia Interesse, an editor at China Briefing issued by consulting firm Dezan Shira and Associates.

“By opening its borders to full foreign ownership, China is aiming to attract multinational tech giants eager to tap into its market potential,” she added.

By contrast, Microsoft began working on Project Natick, an underwater data centre, in 2014. But in 2024, the American tech giant confirmed that it was no longer active after the company sank the data centre, comprising 855 servers, off the coast of Scotland in 2018, where it had been trialled for two years.

Investment from Intercontinental Exchange could help the popular prediction market re-enter the U.S.

New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange ICE -2.19%decrease; red down pointing triangle is in talks to invest $2 billion in Polymarket in a deal that could value the popular crypto-based prediction market at as much as $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The details

The deal could come as soon as Tuesday and is expected to value the business at between $8 billion and $10 billion, they said, cautioning the details are still in flux.

The investment by one of the world’s leading exchange operators, which has a market value of more than $90 billion, could enhance the betting platform’s credibility and aid its efforts to re-establish a U.S. presence.

The context

Polymarket was founded in 2020 and allows users to bet on yes-or-no questions about everything from politics and sports to popular culture. It is privately held and counts billionaire Peter Thiel’s venture-capital firm, Founders Fund, as an investor.

The New York-based company drew attention last year for its betting markets on the presidential election. Its markets on the November 2024 vote attracted more than $2 billion in trading volume and drew widespread media coverage for correctly anticipating Donald Trump’s victory.

Polymarket is banned in several countries as an unlicensed offshore gambling platform. It has been officially off-limits to U.S. users since 2022 following a settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Biden administration.

Days after Trump’s election last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the phone of Polymarket’s founder and Chief Executive Shayne Coplan.

But Polymarket’s relationship with the authorities has improved under the crypto-friendly Trump administration. Coplan in mid-July shared a Bloomberg article on social media that said Justice Department and CFTC probes into the company had ended, writing “Justice prevailed.”

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, joined Polymarket’s advisory board in August, and his venture-capital firm 1789 Capital became an investor in the company.

Polymarket also acquired a small U.S.-licensed exchange and clearinghouse as part of its effort to re-enter the American market.

The big picture

Intercontinental Exchange has a record of jumping on emerging trends in the infrastructure of financial markets. The talks with Polymarket come as prediction markets are enjoying an upswell of mainstream interest.

Kalshi, a Polymarket competitor which was valued at $2 billion in a recent funding round, has enjoyed record trading volumes in recent weeks due to its contracts on the new National Football League season. Many of those football bets have been placed by users of Robinhood Markets, a Kalshi partner.

Robinhood and Kalshi’s push into sports has prompted an outcry from the gambling industry and state gaming regulators, who argue that prediction markets shouldn’t be offering sports bets, a business traditionally regulated by the states.

Intercontinental Exchange also has its own ties to the Trump administration. Its chairman and CEO Jeffrey Sprecher is married to Trump ally Kelly Loeffler, who serves as administrator of the Small Business Administration and briefly served as a U.S. senator from Georgia.

He succeeds Maximilian Bittner, who has led the company for the past seven years.

Vestiaire Collective, a leading global platform for pre-owned luxury fashion, has promoted Bernard Osta to chief executive officer. He succeeds Maximilian Bittner, who has led the company for the past seven years.

Bittner remains a shareholder but no longer holds a position in the company.

Based in Paris, Osta has been part of Vestiaire Collective since May 2021. He had been chief strategy officer from May 2021 to August 2023, and chief financial officer from September 2023 to September 2025. Before joining Vestiaire, Osta spent time advising businesses strategically as an investment banker for 15 years at Lazard (2006 to 2011) and Goldman Sachs (2011 to 2021) in New York and Paris. He also serves as independent member of the supervisory board of media and entertainment group Vivendi.

A statement from Vestiaire’s board said: “We want to thank Maximilian Bittner for his dedication and the significant role he has played in the development of the company since he joined in late 2018. We wish him every success in his future professional projects. Looking forward, we are very happy to open a new chapter under the leadership of Bernard. We have worked very closely with him since he joined Vestiaire Collective. His intimate knowledge of the company, international experience and great leadership will be invaluable assets for Vestiaire Collective in its next phase of growth.”

Osta said: “I am very honored to take the role of chief executive officer of Vestiaire Collective and lead the highly talented team we have built over the years. Vestiaire Collective has secured a unique position as the ultimate trusted marketplace in the highly attractive pre-loved luxury fashion industry. Together, we will continue to transform fashion giving a second life to the most desirable pieces, at the service of a more sustainable model. This is a particularly exciting moment for the company. With the rise of AI, we have an extraordinary opportunity to accelerate on our product roadmap, deliver the most engaging customer experience and gain market share.”

Under this new leadership, Vestiaire will continue to deliver on its mission to transform the fashion industry toward a more sustainable future by focusing on several strategic priorities. According to the company, they include driving innovation at the crossroads of luxury, technology and sustainability; implementing the company’s extensive AI-enabled product roadmap to improve the buyers’ and sellers’ experience at an accelerated pace; increase Vestiaire’s reach and brand awareness through innovative and impactful marketing in its core regions across Europe, the U.S. and Asia-Pacific, and invest in the company’s leading authentication capabilities to further confirm its strategic position as the ultimate trusted marketplace in the pre-loved fashion industry.

Vestiaire, a certified B Corp., features a catalog of over 5 million items and is active in 70 countries.

Last July, the company named Samina Virk global chief marketing officer, adding to her current duties as U.S. chief executive officer. Earlier this year, Vestiaire wrapped up a three-year campaign to tackle textile waste, which has included a ban on fast-fashion brands. In November 2023 Vestiaire blacklisted 30 fashion brands including H&M, Mango, Uniqlo and Zara from being bought, sold or listed on its platform, and continued adding brands such ultra-fast-fashion players Temu and Shein. The company began an influencer education campaign in November 2024 to help change the narrative around popular social media “hauls,” call attention to marketing tactics and nudge consumer behavior.

Last week, the company said it became the first pre-owned fashion business to monetize its avoided emissions into measurable and additional carbon credits. The company’s new approach involves issuing credits that quantify the amount of emissions that were prevented from being used when consumers purchased pre-loved fashion instead of buying new.

During Bittner’s tenure as chairman and CEO, Vestiaire acquired and integrated U.S competitor Tradesy in 2022 and built strategic partnerships with brands such as Gucci, Chloé, Burberry and e-commerce platform Mytheresa. Prior to joining Vestiaire, Bittner was a senior advisor for Alibaba Group.