The innovation aims to make direct transfers on the scale of human-to-machine and machine-to-machine without credit cards' limitations.

FREMONT, CA: JCB, a major global payment brand and a leading credit card issuer and acquirer in Japan, and Keychain GK, a leading technology provider, have developed a novel infrastructure for accessing credit-based micropayments between IoT devices. The innovation aims to make direct transfers on the scale of human-to-machine and machine-to-machine without credit cards' limitations.

The need for automated and machine-to-machine micro-payments will expand as modern networks, such as 5G, launch and use the Internet of Things (IoT) products. Mobile payment applications have allowed the popular mobile user to pay with their handset, but tens of a billion IoT users are not covered by the existing payment system.

Use Cases in Point: Electric vehicles paying automatically for charging, or a farmer earning offline payment for production to a mobile unit. Such an infrastructure needs to deal with the vast cybersecurity and operating risks associated with identity fraud, hacking, privacy, and service denial.

By introducing a modern blockchain and distributed ledger-based payment infrastructure that mitigates the risks of IoT micropayments, JCB and Keychain have started to tackle these challenges.

Micropayment Infrastructure

JCB and Keychain developed the solution (joint Japan patent pending #2021-00571) focused on digital identity, delegated transaction clearance, and protected transaction archival.

1. Integrated Digital Identity

-A unique, blockchain-based, self-sovereign identity aligned with customer identity is available for each IoT unit. This sets the requisite technical framework for attribution of actions and regulatory enforcement.

2. Delegated contract clearance at the edge of the network

-The cost, technical costs, and financial risks of payment processing are driven towards the network's edges leveraging Keychain Core's data provenance capabilities.

-This makes large-scale cybersecurity threats with comparatively large-scale protections to be mitigated.

- The acceptance of the contract is processed in real-time by computers physically near the transaction venue.

- The effect is a cleaner, lower user interface with latency and more scalable risk control for the issuer.

3. Secure Transaction Record Archival

- Applying identity-based data provenance and security methods, the system guarantees that data is securely relayed to the issuer for compliance and integrity checking.

- The records integrate into traditional settlement systems, utilizing the digital identity-user mappings.

The go-to-market roadmap consists of technological enhancement, realistic real-world pilots, the build-up of manufacturing facilities in 2021, and go-live in 2022.

Keychain Blockchain Technology

Keychain Core, the flagship technology product of Keychain, is a series of software building blocks that allow the power of blockchain and distributed ledger technology to be effectively accessed by Keychain partners. With Keychain Core, Keychain partners eliminate data security-related operating costs and achieve new market trends.

Keychain Core embraces a wide variety of products that are easy to connect with current networks and applications, including personal computers, tablets, mobile phones, smartwatches, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

The essential components of the Keychain Core are the following:

1. Identity self-sovereign.

2. Data-centric security.

3. Secure workflows.

4. Custom digital assets.