Tencent Cloud is teaming up with ShareRing to help its blockchain-based digital identity app get people traveling in Asia again, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.
Tencent Holdings is teaming up with blockchain firm ShareRing to aid a beleaguered travel industry with a new digital document and identity management solution, the companies announced on Tuesday.
They plan to first launch the new project in Southeast Asia, a region hit especially hard by travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The plan is to combine ShareRing’s distributed ledger technology with Tencent Cloud’s optical character recognition (OCR), which converts characters into text, helping improve the efficiency and accuracy of data entry. Facial recognition will also be used to enhance identity verification and data management.
ShareRing will combine its distributed ledger technology with Tencent’s cloud services to create a blockchain-based digital identity management platform.
Specifically, ShareRing will use Tencent Cloud’s optical character recognition and facial recognition technology to help improve its “self-sovereign identity app.” In its current form, the app can be used to book flights, hotel reservations, car rentals and a variety of other services.
In a joint statement, Tencent and ShareRing said the aim of this partnership is to help Southeast Asian countries “reopen their borders to tourism and recover from the economic blow” of COVID-19.
The travel and tourism industry has been ravaged by global lockdowns, with S&P Global Ratings forecasting a 60% to 70% drop in global air traffic this year.
The companies indicated that the platform has already received interest from various government agencies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes 10 member states.
The news comes only weeks after ShareRing joins China’s Blockchain Service Network (BSN) as reported by BAR. (See here)
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Story published in CoinTelegraph
