Thank you so much and welcome everybody and konnichiwa for anyone that may be watching online also from Japan. I'm really delighted that we are back being able to share this session with you. This is the third year at EIC that we've been able to take the audience in the room and online on this cross-border journey and yes, we are aiming to be able to get the time to get into Germany and many countries to be much faster and that's what the team will share with you today. I just wanted to first of all get the clicker to work very quickly, set the scene.
As I said, this is the third year and why three years? Because this is an evolving session where the team members I'm about to introduce are working on practical implementation but the moving feast is the standards, the technology, the cross-border agreements, the legal and the commercial and these things are all moving in concert but what we're finding is we get technical solved and then it may require some legal requirement. Legal is solved and then the standards change.
We're going to cover those things but I wanted to start very quickly and call out a report that was published by IATA just in the last couple of weeks to reinforce that the idea of entering a country and crossing a border now with credentials is real. We've got wallet-based credential identity being accepted securely at high assurance levels. It's proving that it can replace biometric verification.
It can be done through a single identity that can be used then to cross the border and across other different journeys, hotels, hiring a car, booking various tourism experiences with a single identity. The most important thing is the interoperability. On that basis, I would love to introduce the rest of, oh, okay, sorry, very quickly. As I've just said in the introduction, the reason three years is because we've been looking at the issuing from a technical point of view, aligning on the seamless verification and the standards.
So we're going to cover all of those things today and I'm happy that we have Rintaro back again, Jinyoung back again, Jan back again. But a new face, but many of you will know already from EIC, is now a hero who is from CTC but also representing OpenID Japan, which is bringing much more of the standard strengths into APDI. And then the only other thing that I would love to say is that APDI has voluntarily aligning with the high assurance profile standards that are coming into the EU so that we're thinking of cross-border from a real ecosystem point of view. But I'll hand now to Rintaro.
Thank you, Katrina. Mic is on? Okay. Okay.
Hello, everyone. I am Rintaro Okamoto from DNP. Last year on this stage, I made promise I'll come back when this ID has solved real problem for real customer.
Today, I'm here to keep that promise. Before I get into the results, here is a short video in 90 seconds. It tells the story of what APDI, our Asia-Pacific Digital Identity Consortium, has been doing and how we end up running a real digital passport checking at a hotel in Tokyo. Asia-Pacific Digital Identity Consortium, APDI, was formed to implement trusted standards and enable cross-border collaboration in the APAC region, unlocking the use of verifiable credentials to solve real-world challenges for users and businesses. What kind of challenges? Think about your hotel check-in this week.
Long queues, handing over your passport, manual verification, even booking errors. But what if you could check-in instantly using your digital identity wallet? Let's go back to where we started. APDI's first boot camp brought together stakeholders across Asia-Pacific to explore digital identity challenges and design cross-border use cases in travel, work, and banking. At EIC 2025, APDI demonstrated a technical proof of cross-border identity verification, marking a major step toward globally-aligned identity frameworks. Fast-forward to January 2026.
In a live proof of concept, 25 participants completed self-directed hotel check-in using a digital passport. Using just a mobile phone and a kiosk, participants experienced real interoperability between a South Korean identity provider and a South Korean identity provider. Interoperability between a South Korean identity provider and a Japanese verifier. The result?
Seamless, privacy-preserving hotel booking and check-in. This real-world use case has taken flight, demonstrating how cross-border digital identity verification is ready to transform global travel experiences.
So, that's the journey. Today, I want to focus on the most recent chapter, when we took digital credentials out of the demo and into a real hotel. The numbers are good, but the lessons from the hotel staff were even more interesting. As you saw in the video, Asia-Pacific is one of the markets, it's many countries with very different cultures, languages, and economic backgrounds. That diversity creates real challenges for digital identity and real opportunities. It's exactly why APDI exists.
To recap the members, APDI brings together road systems from Korea, from Korea, touring space from Taiwan, ZADAC from Myanmar, CTC, and ourselves from Japan. Our mission is captured in three words, trust, bridge, and inclusion. APDI has three cross-border use cases on its roadmap, travel verification, work digitization for foreign workers, and banking and finance. All three share the same bottleneck, identity verification that doesn't work well across borders.
Today, I'll go keep on the first one, hotel checking. Why hotels? Because Japan is going through a tourism boom and labor crisis at the same time. A 2025 survey of about 100 Japanese hotels found this. Nearly 90% says they don't have enough staff. More guests, fewer staff. The front desk takes a hit, and foreign guests with passports, name mismatches, and language barriers take the longest two processes. So we partnered with USEN ALMEX, Japan's number one provider of hotel kiosks and automated payment machines, already installed in thousands of hotel lobbies across Japan.
The distribution matters. A digital ID is only useful if it reaches the place where guests actually check in. Getting from last year's vision to this year's POC took work three fronts. Technically, we aligned credential schemas and integrated them with USEN ALMEX kiosks. On the business side, we spent a week with hotel operators to understand their real pain points and co-creating the solution with USEN ALMEX engineering team. And on the legal side, we mapped the Japanese Hotel Business Act cross-border data handling and privacy compliance. Technical integration alone is not enough.
We worked through the business and legal challenges one-by-one to make this real. Now the results. We ran the pilot at Roazi Hotel Shinagawa Seaside in January and measured the two things hotel operators care about most. Check-in time at the front desk, almost four minutes at the kiosk with a digital passport, just under two minutes, about half the time. Guest registration form at the front desk, around one minute. At the kiosk, about 10 seconds, an 84% reduction. Why such a big drop? Japan's Hotel Business Act requires every foreign guest's passport to be verified by hand.
A verified credential arrives already signed and verified. The kiosk just uses it.
No typing, no checking, no human in the loop. The lesson from the hotel staff was just as important. Front desk staff told us the name mismatches between passport and booking happen frequently. This is not just theoretically. A colleague who is here at EIC with me, with me, ran into exactly this yesterday at a hotel rather right here in Berlin. He had booked and paid in advance, but the reservation was under a completely different name. Two hours to sort it out. Two hours just to check-in. I suspect many of you in this room have your own version of that story.
That's why connecting digital passport to the booking system isn't a nice-to-have. It's the next thing we have to build. That's our update from Shinagawa Seaside Hotels. Our next step is roll this out to more hotels across Japan.
And now, to show you the guest side, I'd like to hand it over to Ji-hyun from Roro System. Ji-hyun, over to you.
Thank you, Komatsu-san. Hello, everyone. I'm Ji-hyun from Roro System. We operate a mobile passport solution in South Korea. From my presentation, I will explain what exactly customer experience and what we can expect from these use cases. Before going into the detailed explanation, let me first show you the actual user flow of the service.
So, as you can see over here, our cross-border hotel first check-in beta program is now online from this May to June. People can just submit their passport information on our application, and then the QR code for check-in is issued. After you've got the QR code, the only thing that you have to do is just arrive at the hotel, scan the QR code, and that's all. Yes.
So, as you just saw, customers can complete their check-in process even before they start travel. So, just briefly remind the flow.
So, after they're booking a hotel at OTA, then they just move to the TripPass application, which is our digital wallet application. In our app, they receive a QR code, and then they can check-in at the hotel.
So, they can check-in at the hotel, they can check-in at the hotel, they can check-in at the hotel, they can check-in at the hotel, in our app, they register their mobile passport and securely submit their passport information to Japan's hotel. And based on that verified passport information, the check-in QR is issued, and by simply scanning that QR code, the customer can complete their hotel check-in.
Also, I want to explain more specifically how cross-border verification is used in this flow. The first is vC issues. The customers can scan the passport OCR and scan the e-passport chip to authenticate the passport information without forgery or tampering.
And then, real-time facial recognition is used to verify that the passport holder and the actual user are the same person. Only after this process is completed, a blockchain DID-based mobile passport is issued. And this mobile passport is then used as a trusted digital identity credential in the hotel check-in. The mobile passport VP is delivered to hotels in Japan through DMP's digital identity hub, and enabling cross-border identity verification between Korea and Japan to be applied to the actual hotel check-in process. This use case is not just operated by a single wallet.
It is operated within a broader and more integrated travel ecosystem. In Japan, DMP serves as the identity hub, connecting verifiers like hotels. On the Korean side, Lord Systems' TripPass platform serves as the user wallet. We provide mobile passport verification, as well as various essential travel services like payment, telecommunications, tax refund, and so on. Bringing together different players from different industries in one integrated ecosystem is exactly what APDI aims to achieve through cross-border digital identity interoperability. Through this POC, we expect three major outcomes.
The first is transformation of the traveler experience. Customers no longer need to wait long queues, fill out guest registration forms, or have their passport copied and stored and open to everyone. The second is data accuracy and security. By using mobile passports, we can structurally prevent issues such as incorrect passport data entry or misuse of another person's passport.
Also, since hotels do not need to leave the passport copies behind, they can significantly reduce the risk of managing customers' personal information. The third is hotels' operational efficiency. Hotels can reduce the front desk workload and labor dependency by streamlining check-in process, including passport verification. In summary, this service provides customers with a faster and safer check-in process, while helping hotels improve operational efficiency, data accuracy, and reduce personal data handling risk. The use of mobile passport is not limited to hotel check-in.
Within hotel services, it can be further expanded to areas such as hotels' data linkage, smart keys, or various other services like vending machines. And beyond hotels, it can also be expanded into other industries which need passport verification for foreigners, such as tax-free transportation, cruise tourism, and so on. Starting with this POC, APDI will continue to build use cases across various sectors. So please look forward to our future use case that we will realize afterwards.
Now, I would like to hand over this stage to Jan. He will share the technical insights throughout this use case.
Thank you, Chin. Hello, everyone. My name is Jan, heading the development of SVX, Mikko's platform for issuance and verification of digital credentials, where we help our customers comply with relevant regulation and technical standards. I usually do the technical part, so I'll run you through three practical technical challenges that we've encountered while doing last year's POC. So the first one is a smaller one, often forgotten around credential schemas and data modeling.
Rintaro already spoke about that there is a relevant regulation in Japan, is the Hotel Business Act, and it requires the following data set on the left. You have the typical passport data, but you also have to capture the traveler's home address and the occupation. And one specific thing, actually, that we had to follow was the regulation requires a copy of the passport. So that is something that we solved by aligning to the ISO photo ID.
I mean, it's a very widely used, adopted technical standard, which covers all of the fields, but we added a new element called the biographical data page, which is a photo of the part of the passport where you find your picture. Next, maybe more interesting, is around usability. We're here at a conference, Geeks Amongst Geeks, so we love to talk about nerdy things and the technical standards and all that fun stuff. But of course, there is two parties who don't care, and that is the traveler on the one hand. A traveler doesn't want to hear about credential formats and selective disclosure.
They just see a wallet as an app, a means to an end, and they just want to use that and get out of their way. We also saw that reliability for them is key. We're 20 years into mobile app development. The bar is set very high, and they have no time for, oh, something doesn't work, read the error messages. We have to think about this like credit cards. It needs to work every time with every verifier in every country. That's the baseline expectation that we've seen. On the other hand, you have the hotel staff.
Again, Rintaro touched on it, and a phrase that we heard is they want SaaS-like simplicity. Again, I think it's the baseline expectation. Most of the platforms that they use hide away all of the complexity.
Also, they don't want to know about dockle queries and trust registries. No, they just want to see the data, and we need to make it as easy as possible. There's also no point in reducing the need for hotel staff to check in a user if they then need an identity expert in some sense, because those flows, if something goes wrong, yeah, we've gotten the feedback that they need to be able to recover. They need to somehow understand what it's about, so they can also help the traveler who's trying to check in at that busy time.
Yeah, the usability problems need to solve. We need to solve that, because that is what's going to drive adoption. Then the last thing is around standards. Last year and the year before, we already spoke a lot about that Asia is not Europe. We're here in Europe. Europe is known for its many, many, many rules and regulations. Asia is very different. There is no overarching entity that is governing all of that.
No, this is from the bottom up, so the parties in the consortium are coming together and negotiate on how to take this forward. We've also seen that the last couple of years, there have been lots of changes to these standards.
Finally, at the end of last year, I believe the December, Christmas day, actually, to be precise, we saw Hype, for example, reach its final status, and this is really important. We've encountered many times that we are testing and then these constantly moving targets and then aligning these different parties with that moving target, again, without overarching regulation that mandates that, was quite the challenge.
That's also why we've created the Katrina profile, which is, Katrina already mentioned it, there might be a connection there, that we align to the OpenIDs Hype, but we do allow some other extensions and adoptions to meet the requirements of the consortium. So again, the same story, it's time to forget about standards a bit and move the technology to the back and really make way and put all our technical effort also in the use cases and make the use, drive the users towards these solutions.
But next, we're going to hear more about standards, so I'll hand over to you. Good morning, everyone. My name is Naohiro Fujie from Itouchio Techno Solutions, which is called Japan's CTC, and as well as I work for the OpenID Foundation Japan as a chairman, and today I talk about the importance of collaboration between SDOs and such consortium like APDI and as well as governments.
Because, first of all, as Katrina said, this is the first time I speak as a member of the APDI, because this year I joined the APDI consortium as a board member. The reason why we joined the APDI, there are several reasons. The first one is about how we expand our business in Asian countries, this is the heart of Itouchio Techno Solutions, but there are other reasons.
I know and I recognize every organization or consortium tries to make interoperable or across borders, and there are so many types of organizations and consortiums there, but they are thinking on their ways, even using technical standards. The important thing is it's not sufficient using technology to make things interoperable. So I'd like to mention again it's important to collaborate between such consortiums and governments and SDOs.
So, as I mentioned, why collaboration matters for interoperability. Achieving the true digital identity interoperability requires deep collaboration between governments, industry consortiums, and standards bodies. As you know, governments provide policy frameworks and also they provide national ID systems.
Also, industry consortiums like APDI provide the opportunity to have cross-sector coordination and also provide designing new use cases. And also, as Jan mentioned earlier, standard bodies provide open protocols or trust frameworks to the market. I'll give one example in Japan. As you know, Japanese government provides a national ID system called MyNumberCard, which is currently over 80 percent of citizens already have MyNumberCard right now.
And also, they are trying to digitalize the MyNumberCard into smartphone. And I heard from the people from the digital agency last month, already they deployed over 7 million digital MyNumberCard to Japanese students' smartphones.
Also, they are struggling to expand the usage or use cases of MyNumberCard, and they had some POC project from 2024 to 2025, which projects were aiming to enable a student discount using MyNumberCard and the student ID issued from the universities. The project was led by a digital agency with a national institute of informatics called NIAI, which is a university association under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education, and Japan Railways West, as you know, transportation operators, and karaoke venues.
Yeah, as you know, Japanese likes to karaoke. So, the scenario was the student present their student ID, which is formed by using a verified credential.
And also, they show the MyNumberCard in a digital way, so that they can get a discounted ticket from the railway operators, as well as karaoke shop. And OpenID Foundation Japan has supported this initiative for two years, even now. Maybe I have no time, so skip it.
So, but yeah, this is my opinion. We have to expand the pilot more broader and more cross-border including.
So, as I mentioned, from 2024 to 2035, the project focuses on the railway discount and karaoke discount, but there might be some opportunity to expand these use cases, like using this discount in entering a museum or other cultural facilities to get more broad students involved. And it's beyond. It might be their chance to get students from other countries, like Thailand or Taiwan or Korea. As you know, the Asian area has a lot of countries, and many of the students cross-border and study other countries.
So, there might be some chance to get other students by providing such digital systems. So, APDI has a working group about discussing such scenarios, and it's already being discussed in APDI working group, and its working group is with a potential collaboration from university and government from Thailand or Taiwan.
So, there might be some opportunity to expand this activity to involve the Japanese government to expand the usage across the cross-border. So, lastly, I'd like to show again the importance of collaboration. For example, I mentioned earlier, standards organization already provides and developing and promoting open standards that enable secure and interoperable digital identity, and also regional consortia like APDI drives cross-border interoperability by coordinating governments, universities, and industry across Asia-Pacific nations.
So, both must work hand-in-hand to create a better future, and even more, I'd like to share that this is quite important, I think. We want to extend this collaboration beyond Asia, connecting with Europe and Americas and all regions to build through global interoperability. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Fujio-san. Okay. Let me wrap up. APDI brings together members from across Asia to create real practical use cases. The hotel check-in and use case I shared today actually came out of one of our workshop in Hakone, Japan. Workshop relaxing in onsen, a hot spring with a view of Mount Fuji. We also run online workshop. One recent example brought together university and government representative from Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand to develop use cases in education space. We hold these workshop regularly and welcome participants from outside Asia. Let's build a real use case together.
And we don't intend to keep this work within Asia alone. Asia-Pacific is a region of many languages and many cultures. We want to bring that perspective, combine it with the work being done here in Europe, and grow the digital identity economy together. The next chapter, we'd like to write with you. Please come and find us after the talk. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Arigato. Thank you so much to the panel.
Now, do we have any questions? I don't see any questions online. If you're in Japan, you can ask a question online.
Otherwise, do we have any questions? Yes, here we are. Thank you very much for the presentation. I came in late, so I might have missed it. You have explained in the beginning, but I was wondering how the trust is formed. For example, in the case of passports, each country's authority's public key is distributed, and you can verify that. In the case of here, I wasn't really sure how it's been done. Thank you for your question. Because it's kind of cross-border use case, I will start explaining from Korea side first.
In Korea, we have, of course, have legal status of operating this mobile passport authentication. We can replace a physical passport, so in Korea, foreigners coming into Korea, they can use our mobile passport at duty-free shops, casinos, or tax-free funds or other authentication to buy alcohol, tobacco, those kind of things. Because already our VC has some of those kinds of legitimate in Korea from Korea's government, and also, as you said, the passport, the best trust resource of that passport is coming from that issued country.
So for Koreans, the Korean passport would be best trusted by Korean government can do the authentication. So as we have linked, connected with Korean government's network, and we do the real-time authentication, we just pass this passport information to our government and then check this information is true and if this person's status is valid or not, kind of things. And we send that status to our Japanese partners and they send to the verifiers who need it. Thank you.
And in this use case, we use only passport photo for checking, but in the future, we must create trust chain for each countries and sophisticated via our workflow. So yeah, that is our next goal.
Okay, any more questions? Well, I'll ask one then. So what is the biggest remaining problem that you have to solve? Maybe if I jump in, and I think everything is happening real-time, and to Nat's question, it's moving two steps forward and one step back. So as Rintaro has talked about, there's no regulatory requirement for this in Asia. This is really, and I think Jan used the words bottom up, this is saying the EU has a very clear mandate through regulation, the technical standards have been set, the work of OpenID and other standards bodies are influencing uptake all around the world.
I see people in the audience from Europe, Australia, we already know even where those regulations are not necessarily there. The market is pulling them. But the challenge is how all those pieces come together. Sometimes the technical is right, the standard shifts. The standard is frozen, the technology needs to change. A bilateral agreement, a scheme, a regulatory shift that impacts the scheme. And so I think what's so important about this work is it's demonstrating the progress and real application, but the challenge is going to be how each of those things continue to come together.
Yes, that's interesting because it is effectively a market pull that is working in Asia rather than a regulatory demand. I think the clever thing from APDI is the fact that they look to Europe, which is really the largest digital identity experiment from a regulated point of view, and said by automatically aligning, and maybe this is something Jan can speak to, by automatically aligning, we have this open door to an ecosystem.
Yes, we set ourselves up, I think, for success. And again, this pull can be even stronger as that opens up use cases. That's kind of the idea behind it. And it would have been simpler if, I think, as Jan said, if we had just said, oh, look, this is a simple technology and we just trust each other and we have this closed loop, much simpler. The road that has been taken has been much more expansive, many more challenges, but ultimately access to a potential global market rather than a regional market. Okay. But slower, more challenges. Thank you. So I think we're coming to the end of time.
So I, please, will you all thank the participants for the wonderful...
