Back in January, the Chinese government suspended the issue of tourist visas to Macao as a part of lockdown restrictions imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19 pandemic.
Since the end of September, it has restarted the issue of visas to Chinese residents, partially due to Macao’s blockchain health code, which capitalizes on China’s open-source blockchain platform FISCO BCOS and Weldentity and is utilized to validate tourists’ health condition ahead of customs clearance.
So far, the platform has been used by 17 million people and is quite quick, requiring less than two minutes to create a code at the first instance and as minimum as three seconds to enter via customs.
Earlier in May, Macao’s health infrastructure turned out to be the first to implement blockchain to battle the epidemic. The blockchain powered health code platform functions as a digital pass for Macao’s residents to visit public places.
The recently included system for mutual identification with the China mainland’s Guangdong health code system paves way for visitors’ health data to be efficiently and precisely validated at customs.
As Macao and Guangdong lie in varied jurisdictions, reciprocal recognition systems are specifically cumbersome to adopt due to stringent info safeguard laws. Health data presented by users is not allowed to be straightaway distributed to health officers of Macao and the Chinese mainland.
The open-source solution Weldentity, built by WeBank and coded over a lockchain developed by a consortitum, is precisely used there. The media release details as follows:
“The way WeIdentity solution works – IDs and personal health data are encrypted to verifiable digital credentials signed by the issuing authorities and recorded on the consortium blockchain network serving the participating organizations. Users transmit data to the receivers directly via a secured communication channel. Receivers will be able to verify the integrity of the data received by comparing with the corresponding digital credentials as recorded on blockchain.”
In the meantime, FISCO BCOS’s blockchchain platform has adequate potential for extending outside China, considering the ambiguity in travel relaxations. The China centered blockchain platform has WeBank, Huawei and Tencent as its founding members, in addition to five more firms.
The blockchain platform was built by the Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium and was the foremost blockchain platform to be embedded into the country’s national Blockchain Service Network (BSN).
