JCB, IDEMIA & Soft Space launch “JCBDC” to trial offline P2P payments

By Gloria Mathias

Japan’s international payment brand JCB has launched the “JCBDC” (JCB Digital Currency) Phase 2 pilot project with IDEMIA, an identity technology, and the FinTech company Soft Space.

In Phase 1 of the JCBDC project, JCB, IDEMIA, and Soft Space developed a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) payment solution, enabling merchants to accept CBDC without the need to modify their POS (point of sale) terminals and payment cards.

In Phase 2 of the JCBCD project, customers will be able to transfer CBDC funds from one person to another using their cards and mobile phones, even without Internet connectivity. These offline P2P (peer-to-peer) fund transfers can either be done from one card to another with a mobile NFC device as an intermediary or from one mobile NFC device to another mobile NFC device directly. This project is compliant with the open WLA (White Label Alliance) payment standard and uses secure elements to ensure optimal security.

For this project, IDEMIA and Soft Space provided the tokenization back-end server, mobile wallet application, card application, and SoftPOS solution, as well as all necessary APIs and SDKs for system and application integration purposes. The project uses IDEMIA’s protocol for offline CBDC payments and leverages Soft Space’s expertise in contactless payments. JCB, IDEMIA and Soft Space will implement the second phase of the project and conduct a pilot in early 2024.

“Our teams are proud to be taking part in this project, alongside JCB and Soft Space, which highlights IDEMIA’s expertise and capacity for innovation in terms of CBDCs. With this new phase, we continue to build on the expertise gained from previous successes with central banks across the world,” shared Romain Zanolo, IDEMIA Managing Director APAC Payment Services.

“We are delighted that phase one of the project has been successful, leveraging on existing technologies that JCB already utilises, such as its contactless EMV technologies and Tap on Mobile SoftPOS,” said Joel Tay, Chief Executive Officer of Soft Space