After completing an oversubscribed ICO, Telegram is internally testing and planning to launch soon a feature of its future Blockchain platform, the Telegram Open Network (TON). As reported by the Russian business daily Vedomosti, this feature, “Telegram Passport,” is meant to identify users based on a copy of their ID document, driver license, bank account statement, etc.
Telegram Passport may be up and running by the beginning of the summer, Vedomosti wrote yesterday, referring to unnamed sources “close to Telegram” and the messenger’s technical teams.
Telegram Passport will allow TON users to quickly connect to the platform itself and to the services provided by its partners. Telegram does not communicate about these future partnerships, but Qiwi, the Russian payment giant whose co-founder Sergey Solonin was among early investors in Telegram’s ICO, is likely to be among them, according to Vedomosti.
Telegram intends to provide its users with full confidentiality. Digital copies of their identification records will be encrypted, stored only on their own devices, and protected with a two-factor authentication password. The messenger itself will not have access to the data until the user confirms his/her consent to transfer it, reads a text on the TON testing platform.
