Mastercard And ICC Work Toward Global Digital Health Pass

How can a country tell which travelers have been vaccinated or tested negative for COVID-19? In many cases, they need to rely on paper documents, which are easy to forge and tough to validate. A digital solution may be the answer, but where will it come from?

Mastercard and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) say they’ve joined forces to create an environment that ensures governments have a wealth of digital health pass solutions to help boost recovery and make travel safe again. This means promoting digital standards to manage and exchange COVID-19 test results and vaccine records, focusing on the appropriate and trustworthy use of digital identity services.

Mastercard is one of the companies collaborating on the Good Health Pass, an effort to create a digital “health passport” that users can carry with them everywhere they go. “Around the world, there is an urgent need for us to develop solutions that will help us address the current health concerns and enable people to safely reconnect with each other and their communities,” Ajay Bhalla, Mastercard’s president of cyber and intelligence, said in a news release on Thursday (March 11).

“Delivering a global, interoperable health pass system can only happen if we come together in a way that meets the needs of everyone involved. Together with ICC, its member organizations and our partners in the Good Health Pass Collaborative, we can work to get the world moving again and jumpstart the global economic engine.” That engine has struggled in the last year, with airlines losing $118 billion in 2020 and projected to lose tens of billions more this year.

Last year, PYMNTS reported that several major airlines, including United and JetBlue, were working together to create the Common Pass, a universal marker that showed when travelers had tested negative for COVID-19.

ICC unveiled its own digital health passport in May of 2020. ICC AOKpass lets users securely present medical records to border and government officials without compromising their private medical information.