NEC Corporation announced on July 10, 2026, a memorandum of understanding with Ava Labs to explore a system that would combine identity verification and stablecoin payments in a single approval on Avalanche. The Japanese technology company framed the work as exploratory, with no product launched.
What the proposal outlines
The partnership centers on a technical whitepaper titled A Unified Framework Leveraging Biometric Decentralized Identity and Avalanche for Next-Generation On-Chain Services. It describes a two-layer architecture: one layer handles identity, the other handles payments and rewards.
The identity component is built on NEC's FaceVC solution, which combines biometric decentralized identity with verifiable credential technology. Under the proposal, a user's raw biometric data stays off-chain and is stored in the user's own wallet. Only verification proofs and a minimal amount of transaction data would be recorded on-chain.
Three chains, three roles
The design relies on Avalanche's multi-chain structure, dividing responsibilities across separate networks:
- A permissioned Avalanche Layer 1 dedicated to identity registration and revocation, tracking which credentials are valid and which have been cancelled.
- A dedicated payment chain called SETTL, which handles the stablecoin transactions.
- Avalanche's public C-Chain, which in this design carries rewards and promotional tokens, forming the loyalty-points layer.
The first intended use case targets inbound tourists to Japan. Visitors would be issued FaceVCs and could then complete identity verification and a stablecoin payment at merchants with one approval.
Why Japan is the starting point
The tourism focus is supported by volume: Japan recorded 42.68 million inbound visitors in 2025. The country's Payment Services Act also lays groundwork for stablecoins to be used as electronic payment instruments. NEC, meanwhile, has been recognized multiple times by NIST for top performance in face recognition accuracy tests.
An exploratory stage
The partnership remains at an early phase, and nothing has launched. The whitepaper is presented as a foundation for future proof-of-concept work, with potential commercialization in areas including payments, financial identity checks, AI agent authentication, and cross-border services.
For Avalanche, the arrangement serves as a showcase for its multi-chain model, placing a permissioned chain, a purpose-built payment chain, and the public C-Chain side by side. The AI agent authentication item on the roadmap points to a possible longer-term use: as software agents act on behalf of people, proving that an agent is tied to a verified human could become a genuine requirement, and biometric credentials are one proposed answer.
