Fujitsu, Mizuho, and JCB Team Up for Decentralized Identity Pilot

Fujitsu’s blockchain-based decentralized digital identity technology will be used in a new pilot program that is being carried out in conjunction with Mizuho Bank and JCB. The program is intended to boost interoperability through the creation of a system that enables the safe and secure exchange of sensitive personal information.

In that regard, the pilot is essentially a proof-of-concept that will inform future development of the decentralized ID exchange system. The participants will all be Fujitsu employees, and JCB and Mizuho are the only corporate entities with which they will be sharing information. The two companies will issue electronic certificates based on the information they have on the participants, while the participants continue to update the system with their own information.

The goal is to give consumers more control over their personal data, while simultaneously making it easier for private entities to verify the authenticity of that information when engaging with customers. Doing so will facilitate economic development because it will reduce the threat of data breaches while still building trust between businesses and consumers. Once that foundation has been built, it can support the delivery of customer-facing applications in a number of different industries.

The trial is scheduled to run for a four-month period between October 2020 and January 2021, and is being set up to make sure that the proposed system works as intended. It will also give Fujitsu a better sense of the infrastructure requirements that will be needed to deploy the platform at scale when they move forward with the next stage of the project. The results will build on a joint Fujitsu and JCB research project that began in 2019.

For its part, Mizuho has been using Fujitsu’s FIDO-certified Finplex Online Authentication Service to verify the identities of its mobile banking customers since March of 2018. It was also one of several financial institutions that participated in a 2017 trial of Fujitu’s blockchain-based peer-to-peer money transfer system.