ATF Approved Fingerprint Scanner

Buffalo Valley Arms LLC is an FFL dealer based in Moran WY, dealing in firearms, firearm accessories, ammunition, and more. They ship firearms and other NFA items to other states as well through FFL dealers throughout the country. Buffalo Valley Arms has a large portfolio of firearms, firearm supplies, ammunition, accessories as well as optics and safety products.

They have been in the business for a fairly long period and understand the firearm industry, especially the retail segment very well. Having served thousands of customers and FFLs throughout the country, they understand the needs of retail as well as B2B customers.

Buffalo Valley Arms LLC is a federally licensed firearm dealer and offers a wide retail range of firearms such as handguns, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, receivers, combos, black powder, and more. They also supply a complete line of ammunition, firearm accessories, eye/ear protection gear, gun locks, cleaning supplies, shooting apparel, knives, tools, air guns as well as gun parts.

Since they are engaged in retail operations and also supply firearms and other NFA items to other FFLs, they have to adhere to the ATF-related formalities including tax stamp approval requests with their respective form to complete the transaction. For example, the transfer of firearms and other NFA items requires Buffalo Valley Arms to submit ATF Form 4 with customer fingerprints for approval of the tax stamp for these items.

Buffalo Valley Arms wanted to make sure that their firearm sales go through a smooth customer experience, especially at the time of processing customer fingerprints. Manual capture with ink and fingerprint card-based fingerprint capture was not only inconvenient for customers but also had a high rejection rate as there was no way to measure the quality of the prints captured.

On top of that, ATF only accepted manually filled paper forms for Form – 4 (Application for Tax, Paid Transfer, and Registration of a Firearm) along with a fingerprint card, before December 2021. However, it all changed with the new eForm system, which allowed FFLs and gun shops not only to eFile but also to submit fingerprint EFT files electronically.

Buffalo Valley Arms also started researching the equipment required and the process of ATF electronic fingerprints. They did their market research and came in touch with Bayometric for the required hardware.

Before the inception of the new eForm portal, FFLs had no choice but to submit fingerprints manually and Buffalo Valley Arms was doing the same. Consequently, it suffered from long wait times and even rejections due to the unreliable quality of ink-based fingerprint captures.

When the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rolled out its new eForm portal, Buffalo Valley Arms knew it was the perfect time to move to the fully electronic ATF fingerprinting process, because:

• With the rollout of the new and modernized eForm system, ATF made sure that all existing issues are addressed and that the new system can provide better functionality to its users.
• The biggest change that came to the new eForm system was the introduction of the new ATF eForm 4. It became possible to submit ATF Form 4 electronically.
• Submission of ATF electronic fingerprints became possible with biometric EFT file format using an NFA-approved fingerprint scanner.
• With the ATF electronic fingerprints in biometric EFT file format and online submission of ATF forms, ATF approval wait times were expected to reduce.

To seize the opportunity, Buffalo Valley Arms wanted a trusted partner that could supply an NFA-approved fingerprint scanner to capture ATF electronic fingerprints for their customers. They also wanted the vendor to share its knowledge as well as support throughout the installation process. After enquiring about several digital fingerprint scanner vendors, they finally chose Bayometric to supply the hardware, i.e. an NFA-approved digital fingerprint scanner.

Our sales team was quick to respond. We also shared our knowledge and expertise with Buffalo Valley Arms about the digital fingerprint scanners in our product portfolio and they selected Integrated Biometrics Kojak – one of the best NFA-approved fingerprint scanners in the market. We close the deal and supplied the hardware on agreed terms respecting the deadlines.

Since Buffalo Valley Arms also wanted installation support, we got them through the installation process at their convenience and the Kojak fingerprint scanner was up and running in no time.

Once the new digital fingerprint scanner was up and running, Buffalo Valley Arms bid farewell to FD-258 fingerprint cards. They migrated their entire workflow to the ATF electronic fingerprints by submitting fingerprint ETF files wherever possible. Following were the major business benefits achieved by deploying NFA approved Kojak fingerprint scanner:

• The process of fingerprint capture became inkless, faster, and more accurate.
• Kojak fingerprint scanner comes with an inbuilt quality control mechanism so it can reject poorly scanned fingerprints and ask the user to rescan; it greatly reduced the chances of bad-quality fingerprints passing through.
• The approval wait times are reduced significantly as electronic submissions of fingerprints with biometric EFT file format are faster to process.
• Overall it improved customer experience and contributed to the business growth.