SINGAPORE, 19 April 2021: Travellers arriving at Singapore’s Changi Airport with the CommonPass digital health pass can now digitally verify their health status with Singapore Immigration and streamline border entry using the technology.
The system is powered by Affinidi, a Singapore-based company founded by investment firm Temasek, in cooperation with the Commons Project Foundation. They inked a new partnership last week that leverages Affinidi’s digital credential verification solution to enable the safe reopening of borders around the world as international travel resumes.
Affinidi’s digital credential verification solution will be accessible to members of the CommonTrust Network, an inclusive global network launched by The Commons Project Foundation and the World Economic Forum (WEF) to ensure that verifiable lab results and vaccination records from trusted sources are presented to authorities in a privacy-preserving manner.
Relevant stakeholders can use digital credentials technology provided by Affinidi for cross-border verification of health documents such as vaccination status and Covid-19 test results, which is key to restarting international travel.
Built on the CommonTrust Network, the CommonPass platform lets travellers digitally collect their lab results and vaccination records from health data sources in the CommonTrust Network and demonstrate that those records meet the health screening requirements of their international destinations.
Governments and digital verification organizations worldwide, along with airlines such as ANA, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, JetBlue, Lufthansa and United Airlines, are adopting the CommonPass project.
Under the partnership, travellers on a Japan Airlines’ test flight from Japan to Singapore on 5 April used CommonPass to present their health records to immigration officers to validate their Covid-19 status using Affinidi’s digital credentials verification solution.
The digital verification technology can verify credentials based on multiple international standards, thereby enabling airlines and immigration authorities to work with health documentation and QR codes issued by institutions and other bodies in different countries.
This process will expedite check-in processing at the airlines and immigration checkpoints at both departure and arrival. At border checkpoints, travellers would simply present their health documents to be scanned by airline staff and immigration officers, which will authenticate the credentials using Affinidi’s technology and inform them if the traveller has met the Covid-19 requirements in the destination country before boarding the flight.
Since December 2020, Affinidi has been running pilot programs to trial its digital health verification solution with multiple airlines, including Singapore Airlines (SIA) and EVA Air, in preparation for the reopening of international borders.
