WeBank just signed a collaboration agreement with the Macao Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT), established by the Macao government. Together, the two parties will collaborate in the development of Macao as a Smart City.

With fintech at front and center, the two parties embark on a long-term partnership to jointly promote urban development of Macao—in fields such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and other technologies deemed vogue today.

While the partnership is with the Macao government-linked FDCT, the enhancements planned are also geared towards the Greater Bay Area, a collection of nine mainland cities, Hong Kong and Macau which would ideally combine into a Silicon Valley-like tech and innovation hub.

First Project: Blockchain-Based Identity Data

The first collaboration project is based on “WeIdentity”, an entity identity authentication and trusted data exchange project. In the traditional model, the exchange of personal data across agencies and departments poses many problems. WeIdentity claims to offer a secure and more efficient solution for inter-institutional identity authentication and data cooperation—all done via blockchain.

The integration should offer technical support for e-government services in Macao.

WeIdentity is an open source project developed by WeBank to help decentralisation of identity management, and also serves as a verifiable data exchange built on top of the underlying FISCO BCOS Blockchain Platform. The goal here is to circumvent problems that arise from data silos and data misuse.

WeBank and Macao Aim to Set a Benchmark

Henry Ma, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of WeBank, said in his speech:

“We are committed to combining fintech best practices with our own open technology strategy to provide secure, reliable and open source solutions for partners around the world. In the future, WeBank and the Macao government will expand their collaboration and jointly explore new models of cooperation between the public and private sectors.”

“I expect that our collaboration will provide a meaningful reference for all enterprises and individuals committed to the development of the Greater Bay Area.”

This collaboration is part of a five-year plan Macao issued in 2016 to set forth a plan of building a smart city. Recent efforts in 2018 toward reaching this goal included pilot projects in Cloud Computing Centers and applications of Big Data, to improve data exchange among governmental departments and to allow for more trans-department applications. In the future, the FDCT intends to extend the smart city project to include non-governmental agencies, so all parties can share that opportunities created from the transition.

Featured image via WeBank