iPassport Ltd has launched Weave, a digital ecosystem undergoing trials with major airlines worldwide. Weave interacts with self-sovereign solutions like IATA Travel Pass, using digital credentials to realize the vision of contactless travel within the industry. It marks the latest milestone for one of the industry’s leading digital identity providers, building on the success of Cognosco, the Identity Management System (IDMS) being utilized by some of the largest airports across the globe.
Established in 2017 by a team of innovators, iPassport provides solutions that enable organizations to seamlessly implement digital identity technologies. The founders have developed a suite of software and services, which provide self-sovereign identity technologies, integration services, biometric identification and identity verification software. The industry-wide increase in demand for paperless, contact-free solutions accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, has escalated interest in this latest release, with airlines joining the ever-growing waiting list to on-board.
Weave is a digital ecosystem that provides the resources required to implement self-sovereign identity technologies throughout an enterprise, quickly and easily. The solution yields web services that enable governments, airlines, airports and other industry stakeholders to issue identity documents. These are issued as verifiable credentials which passengers store on their phones, and results in the stakeholders using the web services to request these documents from the passenger’s phone to verify their authenticity. This utilizes blockchain technology, delivering data minimization and maintaining privacy and security protection.
With millions of people transitioning through airports daily, vast quantities of personal data are being stored unnecessarily. Promoting the decentralized self-sovereign identity principles, Weave allows airlines to reduce or eliminate the necessity to store personal data, hence reducing associated risks and costs. Additionally, it facilitates the next generation of self-service passenger processing solutions through the elimination of physical document checks. Therefore, the emergence of self-sovereign identity technologies has proved incredibly attractive and is set to disrupt all sectors that process and store personally identifiable information.
“We see verifiable credentials as the technology to deliver the Holy Grail of self-sovereign identity” commented Joshua Noon, the Head of Research and Development at iPassport. “The potential of this technology within aviation is huge. iPassport are dedicated to helping stakeholders reap the benefits by delivering accessible and affordable managed services which eliminate the complexity often associated with integrating new technologies.”
As an IATA Strategic Partner, iPassport is proud to support the IATA Travel Pass with Weave, delivering an interwoven ecosystem of connected technologies. Utilizing ‘issue’ and ‘retrieve’ functions to communicate information held in a wallet app (iPassport’s Stashd or IATA Travel Pass) to an IDMS (iPassport’s Cognosco), will enable passengers to create and utilize a digital identity on their mobile phone, to facilitate biometrically-enabled contactless travel. This approach removes the need for in-airport enrolment, as well as standardizing the biometric passenger processing and giving accessibility to every stakeholder.
After this challenging year for the industry, the implementation of iPassport solutions will bring security and agility to airline systems of the future. iPassport is inviting aviation to evaluate their current solutions and explore the future of digital credentials, together.
Hannah Roff
Sales and Marketing Department Lead
www.ipassport.global
