The Japanese tech giant and Ava Labs signed an MoU to pair face-based credentials with on-chain payments, starting with tourists in Japan
NEC Corporation wants your face to do two jobs at once: prove who you are and pay for your souvenirs.
On July 10, 2026, the Japanese technology company announced a memorandum of understanding with Ava Labs. The goal is to explore a system where identity verification and stablecoin payments happen with a single approval on Avalanche.
How the system is supposed to work
The centerpiece of the partnership is a technical whitepaper. Its title is a mouthful: “A Unified Framework Leveraging Biometric Decentralized Identity and Avalanche for Next-Generation On-Chain Services.”
Stripped of the academic packaging, the paper describes a two-layer architecture. One layer handles who you are. The other handles what you pay and what you earn.
The identity piece runs on NEC’s FaceVC solution. FaceVC combines biometric decentralized identity with verifiable credential technology.
The privacy design is the part worth paying attention to. Under the proposal, a user’s raw biometric data stays off-chain, stored in their own wallet. Only verification proofs and a minimal amount of transaction data get recorded on-chain.
Three chains, three jobs
The architecture leans on Avalanche’s multi-chain setup, splitting responsibilities across three separate networks.
The first is a permissioned Avalanche Layer 1. It is dedicated to identity registration and revocation, meaning it tracks which credentials are valid and which have been cancelled.
The second is a dedicated payment chain called SETTL. It handles the stablecoin transactions themselves.
The third is Avalanche’s public C-Chain. In this design it carries rewards and promotional tokens, the loyalty-points layer of the system.
The initial use case targets inbound tourists in Japan. Visitors would be issued FaceVCs, then complete identity verification and stablecoin payment at merchants with one approval.
Why Japan, and why now
The tourism angle has real numbers behind it. Japan recorded 42.68 million inbound visitors in 2025.
Japan’s Payment Services Act lays groundwork for stablecoins to be used as electronic payment instruments.
NEC has been recognized multiple times by NIST for top performance in face recognition accuracy tests.
What this means
The partnership is in an exploratory phase, and nothing has launched. The whitepaper is framed as a foundation for future proof-of-concept work. Potential commercialization could follow in areas including payments, financial identity checks, AI agent authentication, and cross-border services.
For Avalanche, the deal is a showcase for its multi-chain model. The design uses a permissioned chain, a purpose-built payment chain, and the public C-Chain side by side.
The AI agent authentication item on the roadmap is worth flagging. As software agents start acting on behalf of people, proving that an agent is tied to a verified human could become a genuine need, and biometric credentials are one possible answer.
