Factom has announced an initiative with Ancun Zhengxin in China to bring together blockchain or distributed ledger technology with electronic data notarization services in the country.

A new partnership sees Factom, a blockchain-based solutions and infrastructure provider come together with Ancun Zhengxin, a Chinese data notarization provider to further blockchain technology for real world applications in the country.

As a subsidiary of the Ancun Group, Ancun Zhengxin offers notarization services in over 100 locations spanning across 28 provinces in China. As a part of the agreement, Factom will offer advice and technical guidance to the Chinese firm in an effort to customize blockchain solutions for its notarization services.

Beyond having partnerships in over 100 notarial offices in China, Ancun Zhengxin also officers services such as voice, email, documents, contracts, copyright, electronic government, medical data and instant messaging across a broad range of industries.

Blockchain Solutions

Factom will provide its blockchain expertise and develop an application interface to blockchain for Ancun Zhengxin’s back office operations. Texas-based Factom will also notably build an application interface to help integrate blockchain solutions with the Chinese firm’s existing software systems.

The goal is to leverage blockchain technology to usher in greater transparency and accountability while bringing costs down among traditional notarization services in a vast market like China. The blockchain solution will also secure data history and assist the notarization service with timestamps.

In statements, Factom CTO Jack Lu said:

Jointly, we will build added security within online commerce and communication. This is an exciting opportunity, and we are looking forward to more collaborations in the future.

The Growing Digital Footprint in China

The Chinese firm is looking to offer a one-stop shop for electronic data storage and a notarization solution, to cement trust in a rapidly digitizing China. Internet penetration in China is pushing towards 750 million users, further underlying its significance as an integral part of China’s economic infrastructure. Business transactions, technological progress, internal communications and even social development in a country of over 1.3 billion people sees an increasing reliance on digital data.

With this in mind, Ancun Zhengxin sees blockchain-solutions as the key to maintaining integrity and trust to secure digital data.

Bing He, head of technology at Ancun Zhengxin stated:

We are focused on providing our customers with a one-stop shop Internet technology solution, to meet their electronic data storage and notarization needs. Through collaborating with Factom, we anticipate speeding up the process of providing blockchain technology based solutions to our customers, while helping the industry move to the next level in technology, information integrity and data security.

Factom recently announced its endeavor in working with consulting firm iSoftStone to bring blockchain-based administration projects to build smart cities in China. With ‘Factoids’ as the token value issued by the blockchain system used by Factom, tokens are transferred among users who purchase entry credits and record entries. The Factom servers will create entry and directory blocks. The hashing of directory blocks is secured onto the blockchain.

Toward the end of 2015, Factom also joined Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform. Factom’s integration with Azure will include bitcoin data service of prices from different exchanges recorded on Factom’s blockchain. Following its foray into Microsoft’s blockchain service platform as a partner, Factom price soared soon after following increased trading of the alt currency.

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