Netki Launches Digital ID, Closes Compliance Gap for Blockchain Use Across Business, Finance and Healthcare

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - May 23, 2017) - Netki today launched a digital identity service that makes blockchains safe for a broad range of business and personal use cases, while meeting national and international legal standards. The service provides automated onboarding and validation of new customers, and easy sharing of digital identities, thus closing a critical compliance gap that limits blockchain innovation and adoption. The Netki Digital ID works across both private and public blockchains, and can be embedded into a variety of finance, healthcare and business applications.

Netki also announced its first customer deployment with Bitt, a Caribbean fintech company that provides a mobile wallet and low-fee service for sending and receiving money globally. Users can process transactions from their mobile device and send payments for goods or services locally from island to island, over the internet, or directly to friends and family anywhere around the world. The Bitt wallet works as easily as using email, and dramatically changes banking and payments for individuals and institutions in the Caribbean islands.

"Blockchain is a game-changing technology that promises to re-define the financial system -- but it won't get there if we can't address global legal and compliance requirements," said Justin Newton, Netki's founder and CEO. "Digital identity is a fundamental requirement for compliant blockchains. We're excited to do our part by delivering a production-ready service that makes blockchain safe for mainstream adoption -- and makes identity as easy to manage as PayPal."

Netki's Digital ID is designed to reduce the risk of blockchain transactions, while supporting compliance needs for financial institutions, money service businesses and medical record systems. Netki's service enables easy capture of an individual's documents and biometrics via their smartphone, along with multiple levels of automated and manual verification -- including database checks, machine learning and biometric analysis. Netki's onboarding also addresses a broad range of Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and customer privacy requirements.

Once a Digital ID is created and validated, it can be easily shared via digital identity certificates that are legally valid in the U.S. and other jurisdictions. Netki Digital ID addresses various regulatory requirements, including the U.S. Department of Treasury's Travel Rule, which states that all four participants in a transaction (sender, receiver and each of their financial partners) must disclose validated identities before exchanging $3,000 U.S. or more.

To enable identity sharing, Netki has developed key innovations that bridge traditional regulations and the open, permissionless networks made possible via blockchain technology. These include:

1. A new peer-to-peer payment protocol (BIP75) that allows senders, receivers and their financial partners to exchange all four identities via a private encrypted channel. BIP75 was co-authored by Netki and is publicly available as an open source protocol. Early blockchains used a one-way payment protocol (BIP70) that is only available for institutions, not individuals.
2. A new digital identity certificate, created by Netki, that uses an existing standard recognized by governments worldwide as legally validated identity. It can also store additional data to meet custom validation requirements for other countries or more complex transactions.

"Netki's Digital Identity product provides an efficient and easy onboarding process for our financial services clients," said Robert Allen, co-founder of PwC's digital asset services. "It enables them to meet Know Your Customer requirements for new customers, as well as share that identity with counterparties in support of their Anti Money Laundering program when using public or private blockchains. Solving the compliance issue was the key component to enable our clients to go from lab to production."

Netki is working globally with major business and technology partners, including IBM and PwC Australia and others, to drive mainstream adoption of blockchain and digital identity. Netki is an active participant in IBM's ecosystem around the Hyperledger Project, an open source collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, IoT, supply chain, manufacturing and technology, hosted by The Linux Foundation. Netki is also an active partner with PwC Australia in its Vulcan Project, designed to make blockchains and bitcoin more interoperable and accessible to large institutions.

Pricing and Availability

Netki's Digital ID service is available immediately for integration into new or existing applications for a wide range of use cases. Typical customers include financial institutions, healthcare providers and large enterprises that are using blockchain to invent new products, open new markets or transform their customer experience. Pricing is based on number of certificates and complexity of validations.

About Netki

Netki delivers software and services that enable mainstream adoption of blockchain technology. The company's digital identity and wallet naming services are used by early adopters and innovators in the blockchain ecosystem, including Bitt, IBM, and PwC Australia. The company was founded by Internet technology veterans who believe in the power of open, permissionless networks to change the world. Investors include O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Colle Capital, Digital Currency Group, Plug and Play, The Husseini Group, Bitfinex and Base Ventures.

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