The Chinese government has entered a partnership with MY E.G. Services Berhad (MYEG) to leverage on the Zetrix blockchain to offer cross-border credentials verification services. The government entered the partnership through China’s state-owned Guangxi Beitou IT Innovation Technology Investment Group Co., Ltd. (Beitou IT Innovation).
Through this collaboration, China is paving the way for digitalization of vital documents, including major government-issued identity credentials. Already, a public demonstration has been conducted using driving license issuance as verifiable credentials.
The trial focused on issuing driving licenses to Chinese nationals was held at the China-Asean Expo on 16-20 September in Nanning, capital city of south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
This application of Zetrix blockchain allows Chinese citizens to apply for and obtain digitalized versions of their licenses as Verified Credentials stored on the Zetrix blockchain wallet. This will increase convenience in handling such documents and make them easily verifiable.
The license can also be presented anywhere in the world, both as a driving license and as a proof of identity. Commenting on the partnership, Beitou IT Innovation chairman Shuiping Lai said:
“The collaboration with MYEG is a key step of our Asean business development. The digital cross-border credential verification platform based on the international blockchain infrastructure is a very meaningful attempt for both MYEG and Beitou IT Innovation’s professional digital teams.”
“By leveraging the features of blockchain such as immutability and data security, this platform is able to provide the convenience to the cross-border communications of China-Asean people under the premise of legal compliance,” Lai added.
Following the trial with driving licenses, the collaboration between MYEG and Beitou IT Innovation will continue to expand and include the digitalization and verification of all types of documents that are currently issued as physical documents.
Bringing 1 Billion Users to Web3
The partnership is taking advantage of the cross-border capabilities of Zetrix, a Layer-1 blockchain developed by MYEG, which also hosts the international supernode of China’s national Xinghuo Blockchain Infrastructure and Facility. This enables mutual cross-border issuance and verification of Verificable Credentials on Zetrix and Xinghuo International.
Apart from the convenience of owning and readily verifying digital documents, this will also provide a simple solution for customer onboarding, as well as transactional or service delivery processes. It will also contribute towards eliminating incidents of document fraud and falsification, while maintaining security and safety standards.
According to MYEG founder and group managing director TS Wong, this will be an avenue for bringing more users to the web3 ecosystem.
“We continue to build real-world Web3 applications leveraging on its unique functionality of ensuring the authenticity of digitized documents, including identity credentials and trade documents. Such applications will be the driver to bring 1 billion users to Web3,” Wong said.
China Maximizing the Use of Blockchain Technology
China is one of the countries that, even though it is opposed to the idea of cryptocurrencies, is leveraging the use of Blockchain technology – which underpins cryptocurrency – in several of its economy’s sectors.
Before the partnership to issue digitalized versions of documents on Zetrix, China was already advanced in its exploration of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
After Nigeria and other countries which have already issued their own CBDCs, China is one of the most advanced in this technology and is already doing a public trial of the digital Yuan, which could be released next year.
