OIDF & OIDF-J welcome the Japanese Digital Agency, West Japan Railway Company, and the National Institute of Informatics’ Student VC Project

Published April 4, 2025

Translated from the OIDF-J announcement.

The OpenID Foundation and the OpenID Foundation Japan would like to express our sincere welcome to the pilot project for the social implementation of services for students using verifiable credentials, which was conducted and announced in March 2025 by the Digital Agency, West Japan Railway Company, and the National Institute of Informatics.

Details of the pilot project

In this pilot project, universities will issue student enrolment certificates as verifiable credentials to students’ digital wallets. By presenting these credentials at ticket sales sites provided by West Japan Railway Company and others, the goal is to enable students to access student-specific services.

Students who have already purchased tickets can pass through the facial recognition system.

Students can present the ticket on their smartphone.

The press conference. From left to right in the photo:

 

The Digital Credentials Protocols Working Group of the OpenID Foundation is currently working on technical specifications¹ for issuing and presenting verifiable credentials, namely “OpenID for Verifiable Credential Issuance” and “OpenID for Verifiable Presentations”, which have already been adopted by the European Digital Identity Wallet project² and others.

We believe that the adoption of these technical specifications, and their promotion in Japan by the West Japan Railway Company, which provides important social infrastructure with government support, and the National Institute of Informatics, which operates an academic authentication federation involving many universities and research institutions, is a highly significant development for the global identity community.

The Japanese government has provided significant support to the OpenID Foundation and the OpenID Foundation Japan through funding for the development of certification programs that verify proper implementation of the technical specifications provided by the OpenID Foundation, as well as through the adoption of OpenID-related protocols in government administrative services.

The OpenID Foundation and OpenID Foundation Japan sincerely thank all supporters to date and warmly welcome this demonstration project. We will continue to provide technical specifications and support for the promotion of social implementation.

■ Comments from each organization

Mr. Nobuchiyo Kishi, Parliamentary Secretary for Digital Affairs, Digital Agency
“In recent years, alongside the use of My Number cards for identity verification, there has been increasing demand for online verification methods such as in this initiative. We recognize the importance of creating practical use cases to support future expansion. We hope this initiative will continue to grow, involving multiple universities, certificate issuers, transportation agencies, and more.

“We will continue working with the OpenID Foundation Japan to explore possibilities for social implementation and international collaboration.”

Mr. Hideo Okuda, Director and Managing Executive Officer, General Manager of the Digital Solutions Division, West Japan Railway Company

“Through our digital strategy, we aim to 'move people's hearts by fully utilizing data and digital technology to connect each customer with the Group’s diverse services'.

“With this initiative, we also hope to 'improve operational efficiency and evolve the customer experience by digitizing qualification verification, including school enrollment certification', by promoting the 'utilization of My Number cards to connect with each customer'.”

Professor Hiroyuki Sato, Director, Research and Development Center for Trust and Digital ID, National Institute of Informatics

“We welcome this successful experiment, which has shown that issuing digital certificates through academic institutions and linking them to digital authentication apps can bring real benefits, such as student discounts, to students and others. This adds new value to the use of digital certificates and digital authentication applications. Moving forward, we aim to further enhance their value by standardizing formats.”

Footnotes:
*1 Digital Credentials Protocols Working Group
*2 EU Digital Identity Wallet Architecture Reference Framework

■ Contact
OpenID Foundation Japan
contact@openid.or.jp

About the OpenID Foundation

The OpenID Foundation (OIDF) is a global open standards body committed to helping people assert their identity wherever they choose. Founded in 2007, we are a community of technical experts leading the creation of open identity standards that are secure, interoperable, and privacy preserving. The Foundation’s OpenID Connect standard is now used by billions of people across millions of applications. In the last five years, the Financial Grade API has become the standard of choice for Open Banking and Open Data implementations, allowing people to access and share data across entities. Today, the OpenID Foundation’s standards are the connective tissue to enable people to assert their identity and access their data at scale, the scale of the internet, enabling “networks of networks” to interoperate globally. Individuals, companies, governments and non-profits are encouraged to join or participate. Find out more at openid.net.  

 

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