Nikolas Sargeant
cheqd, the startup that allows users and organizations to gain control and portability of their identity data, announced on Wednesday, September 20th, that it launched Credential Payments, a new feature of its decentralized network and SaaS product, Credential Service.
The launch of Credential Payments makes it possible for organizations and individuals to get paid for providing their identity data while maintaining privacy, building infrastructure to create Trusted Data markets as an entirely new industry category.
According to the team, Credential Payments is a pioneering capability for Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), enabling the settlement of on-chain payments for Trusted Data that is stored off-chain to ensure privacy. This makes it possible for users to exchange and transact their verifiable Trusted Data in a privacy-preserving way.
The cheqd team has built products and tools to help companies plug into the network's identity and payment functionalities. Credential Service is one of its major products. It is a scalable solution that removes all of the complexity required to build or integrate decentralized identities into existing applications.
The team also launched a wide range of SDKs for power users. This latest development makes it possible for organizations to create new business models and has clear potential to boost the adoption of SSI by solving the market supply side cold-start problem.
Entities now have a direct financial incentive to issue credentials/Trusted Data, with cheqd network Credential Payments making it possible to create recurring revenue based on a credential being used.
The cheqd team added that as more credentials become available to more verifiers and receivers at a lower cost than existing alternatives, more issuers will enter the market to increase their coverage.
SSI is set to be an effective solution at a time of increasing regulation, pushing global organizations to be more responsible and accountable in dealing with users’ data. According to cheqd’s research, the global market for SSI could eventually reach more than half a trillion dollars in value.
With Credential Payments that allow owners of verifiable data to retain full privacy, cheqd sets itself apart from other identity networks.
Use Cases
The product has numerous use cases, but the hottest ones are finance and education. In the financial ecosystem, regulations are being adopted worldwide for the crypto and DeFi industry, with a heavy focus on enforcing Know Your Customer (KYC) or qualified investor status.
Credentials make it possible for DeFi protocols to set KYC and investor acceptance requirements whilst allowing users to re-use their information seamlessly. This ensures that DeFi protocols meet regulations whilst maintaining a smooth user experience. With Credentials, issuers of KYC and qualified investor credentials can now be paid for these whenever protocols need to check investor statuses.
In the education sector, certifying accomplishments and achievements can be used for providing more tangible trust around accreditations, with a price to establish trust.
To trust accomplishment credentials, verifiers need to be sure that the issuers are legitimate. Furthermore, verifiers can pay the issuers of said credentials, similar to the current operation of university registry offices for checking the veracity of degrees.
In the future, cheqd is set to play a crucial role in growing the adoption of verifiable, trusted credentials and ensuring that SSI breaks into the public consciousness.
cheqd (cheqd.io) is a privacy-preserving payment and credential network that allows users and organizations to gain control and portability of their data.
