Government Digital Identity Integration - iAM Smart and CorpID

The Challenge

As digital services expand across government, financial institutions, and commercial platforms, verifying the identity of individuals and organisations has become a core requirement. In Hong Kong, iAM Smart and CorpID provide mechanisms for digital identity verification for individuals and businesses respectively.

However, integrating these identity systems into broader digital services can present challenges. Organisations may still rely on repeated onboarding processes, fragmented verification workflows, and manual handling of identity data across different systems.

There is a need for approaches that enable these government-issued identities to be used more consistently across services, while maintaining appropriate controls over data use and privacy.

The Solution

This initiative integrates iAM Smart and CorpID with the KeyPear digital identity infrastructure to support the use of verified identity data within digital services.

Through this approach, identity information verified through iAM Smart and CorpID can be represented as digital credentials and stored within a user-controlled environment. These credentials can then be presented when verification is required.

The system follows an Issuer-Holder-Verifier model, where:

• Trusted authorities verify identity information.
• Individuals or organisations hold the credentials.
• Service providers perform verification when needed.

This enables identity verification to be conducted without requiring repeated submission of documents. The design also incorporates consent-based mechanisms to support controlled data sharing.

Emali was responsible for system architecture design, integration, and implementation.

The Impact

The integration provides a structured method for using government-verified identity data within digital services.

For service providers, it supports identity verification processes that can reduce reliance on repeated onboarding steps.

For users and organisations, it provides a way to reuse verified identity information across different services.

More broadly, the initiative illustrates how government identity systems can be incorporated into wider digital infrastructures to support identity verification and data exchange.