SITA ‘exploring blockchain potential’

BTN News
Thursday, 26 May 2016

Travel IT company SITA is exploring the potential of blockchain (the platform that underpins bitcoin) technology to provide travellers with a secure single token to travel through airports and across borders.


The revolutionary technology provides the opportunity to allow secure biometric authentication of passengers throughout the journey across borders. It could eliminate the need for multiple travel documents without passengers having to share their personal data.


SITA also is researching how using virtual or digital passports in the form of a single secure token on mobile and wearable devices could reduce complexity, cost and liability around document checks during the passenger journey.


Jim Peters, cto SITA said: “To date, technology has provided the opportunity to do that at many airports and at more than 30 of the world’s borders. But the underlying design of today’s computer systems means that there are multiple exchanges of data between various agencies and multiple verification steps, which reduces the ability to have a single global system.


“Now, blockchain technology offers us the potential to provide a new way of using biometrics. It could enable biometrics to be used across borders, and at all airports, without the passenger’s details being stored by the various authorities.”


SITA’s research imagines passengers creating a verifiable ‘token’ on their mobile phone which contains biometric and other personal data. In this vision of future travel, no matter where in the world they go, any authority can simply scan their face and scan their device to verify they are an authorised traveller. This can be done without all these agencies ever controlling or storing biometric details.

SITA ‘exploring blockchain potential’

BTN News
Thursday, 26 May 2016

Travel IT company SITA is exploring the potential of blockchain (the platform that underpins bitcoin) technology to provide travellers with a secure single token to travel through airports and across borders.


The revolutionary technology provides the opportunity to allow secure biometric authentication of passengers throughout the journey across borders. It could eliminate the need for multiple travel documents without passengers having to share their personal data.


SITA also is researching how using virtual or digital passports in the form of a single secure token on mobile and wearable devices could reduce complexity, cost and liability around document checks during the passenger journey.


Jim Peters, cto SITA said: “To date, technology has provided the opportunity to do that at many airports and at more than 30 of the world’s borders. But the underlying design of today’s computer systems means that there are multiple exchanges of data between various agencies and multiple verification steps, which reduces the ability to have a single global system.


“Now, blockchain technology offers us the potential to provide a new way of using biometrics. It could enable biometrics to be used across borders, and at all airports, without the passenger’s details being stored by the various authorities.”


SITA’s research imagines passengers creating a verifiable ‘token’ on their mobile phone which contains biometric and other personal data. In this vision of future travel, no matter where in the world they go, any authority can simply scan their face and scan their device to verify they are an authorised traveller. This can be done without all these agencies ever controlling or storing biometric details.