Thailand, one of the most-visited countries in the globe, volition soon apply blockchain to its Electronic Visa On Arrival (eVOA).

Thailand's new blockchain-powered eVOA system intends to speed upwardly and protect the digital visa awarding process and volition shortly exist bachelor for v 1000000 visitors from 20 countries.

eVOA operator partners with Australian travel firm for the blockchain-enabled service

The upcoming eVOA feature is a joint endeavor of Australian travel company ShareRing and Gateway Services, an entity that owns the license to procedure eVOA for Thailand, co-ordinate to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on December. 19. According to the announcement, Thailand will initially roll out the blockchain-enabled eVOA service with a focus on visitors from Red china and Republic of india.

The new feature will purportedly streamline the process of applying for Thailand'south visa as its existing Visa On Arrival process is washed at airports or state entry points in Thailand, according to Tim Bos, CEO and co-founder at ShareRing. The procedure is paper-based and requires travelers to bring a number of documents like printed copies of their airline tickets, adaptation confirmation and photos. Such a process usually takes about one 60 minutes to complete, Bos said in an email to Cointelegraph.

Blockchain engineering is used to improve security and speed of the digital visa applications

As digitized application procedure is associated with major risks fraud or mistakes from the eVOA provider, ShareRing have been working with Gateway Services in order to improve security, speed and the quality of this process, ShareRing CEO noted.

Specifically, ShareRing provides Gateway Services with its self-sovereign identity engineering OneID, which enables optical character recognition (OCR) and protects data by encrypting all the information into a single file on blockchain. Bos explained that such a combination of blockchain tech and OCR reduces the corporeality of time required for eVOA partners to manually verify all the information.

Additionally, ShareRing is eyeing further global expansion of its blockchain-based visa awarding organization after successfully completing its initial pilots. Bos noted:

"We come across this as a blueprint for possible expansion to other countries. It's not a procedure that will be rushed though, as we need to make sure we get it right here before entering other countries."