Hitachi and KDDI trial biometric payments on blockchain
Japanese telco KDDI Corporation and Hitachi are trialling biometric retail payments using blockchain.
Their plan is to do an experiment with a coupon settlement system. KDDI and Hitachi employees will use finger vein authentication as a form of ID, and the firms will verify the processing time and convenience.
In the trial, Hitachi’s public type biometric authentication infrastructure (PBI) will use the Hyperledger Fabric.
Hitachi explains: “Unlike traditional biometric authentication technology, PBI does not need to preserve biological information itself such as finger vein and can authenticate using public key converted to data difficult to decode.”
With this privacy and security in mind, Hitachi adds that its tech offers automatic generation of an electronic signature “with the characteristic data of biometric information”. This in turn offers a “low risk of theft”.
The firms say that since coupon usage information recorded in the blockchain is extremely difficult to tamper with, it is easy to share coupon usage history securing reliability between KDDI and affiliated stores, and payment according to the number of coupon users is highly accurate.
Hitachi has shown plenty of interest in blockchain before.
In 2016, Hitachi and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ started proof of concept testing for using blockchain in the digitalisation of cheques in Singapore.
In addition, Hitachi contacted FinTech Futures and told us that it joined Hyperledger in 2016.
“But Hitachi has been working on blockchain type technologies since late 90’s. Our first patents were filed in the early 2000’s. Back then it was called the Hysteresis Signature.”
