Blockchain-powered decentralized digital identity and payments company Nuggets Ltd. Thursday announced a partnership with Lateral Payment Solutions Ltd. to integrate a distributed ledger identity solution for merchants to allow them to avoid usernames and passwords.

Using a distributed ledger blockchain, Lateral Pay will be able to offer merchants the ability to interact with customers without the need to store or access personal data. The blockchain solution is also expected to increase security and privacy for both customers and merchants by protecting payment transactions with cryptography.

Alastair Johnson, chief executive and founder of Nuggets, said that this partnership with Lateral Pay “will extend the reach of Nuggets to consumers who want to use it to pay with credit and debit cards and that Lateral Payments “has identified the significant opportunity of frictionless digital identity, payment and verification through blockchain.”

Based in Australia, Lateral Payments offers integrated payment solutions to merchants as well as online billing, transaction reporting and automatic reconciliation. Since the company’s launch in 2011, Lateral Payments has processed millions of transactions for merchants across the world.

Integrating Nuggets’ blockchain payment solution will connect the payment processing gateway to merchant identity, which is how it can avoid the need for usernames and passwords.

Instead of entering or accessing identity information directly, Nuggets stores that information, as well as payment information, in what the company calls a secure “personal cloud” in a zero-knowledge blockchain storage system. Because this information secured with encryption keys, not even Nuggets platform can access that data. Only the customer, who holds the keys, can change or access that information directly.

With the Nuggets mobile or desktop app, it’s possible for a customer to log into a website or service by using biometric proof — such as fingerprint verification on a mobile phone. Since all of this exchange of information happens through Nuggets system, the payments and verification happens without the merchant needing to be involved in anything sensitive. This avoids getting the merchant entangled with storing personal information or payment information that could be leaked in a hack of the merchant’s database.

Nuggets claims this service is part of providing what the company calls “self-sovereign identity” on a mass scale, giving the power to control identity and sensitive information securely back into the control of users.

“Our merchants process fast and simple payments via our platform – but they’re also increasingly concerned about how retailers and payment providers store their personal data,” said Ian Vidamour, director of Lateral Payment Solutions. “Our collaboration with Nuggets, and our integration of their blockchain technology, tightened security around the storage of personal information.”

Image: Nuggets