Hong Kong, UAE push digital business identity infrastructure

Digital identities for businesses are arriving across the world, with Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) seeing their own initiatives.

In Hong Kong, the government has chosen an electronic signature vendor for the Digital Corporate Identity Platform (CorpID), giving the task of digital signatures, certificate management, and signature verification services to eSign.AI, previously known as eSignGlobal.

The service will be integrated with the citizen digital ID system iAM Smart, allowing identity verification and providing digital certificate services for both enterprises and individuals, the company announced last week.

CorpID is expected to launch in phases starting in late 2026, while e-government services for businesses are due to appear in mid-2027. The government service has been developed as a business equivalent of iAM Smart, offering unified identity authentication, digital signing, form pre-filling and e-licence storage.

First blockchain business ID arrives to Innovation City

UAE’s Innovation City in Ras Al Khaimah is making similar moves. The free trade zone (FTZ) launched a blockchain-based digital identity system for businesses, allowing companies to receive a sovereign, cryptographically-verifiable identity on the OPN chain.

“For decades business identity has been trapped in paper, PDFs, and fragile databases – slow, opaque, and built for a world that no longer exists. We are ending that era,” says Paul Dawalibi, CEO of Innovation City.

The FTZ sees several advantages in picking a blockchain-based businesses digital ID: Ownership changes, compliance update and verification are permanently recorded, transparent and publicly auditable, enabling banks, regulators, investors and AI agents to confirm authenticity fast.

The technology also reduces the risk of document fraud, beneficial ownership and shell company formation. It is also suitable for integrating into agentic AI, with plans for agents to autonomously process licences, permits, compliance checks, taxation and more, according to a release.

In April, the UAE government announced an initiative to transition half of its federal government sectors, services, and operations to agentic AI within two years. The goal is to use AI agents to reduce operational costs, boost productivity and redesign government policies and processes.

Other jurisdictions are also testing digital ID systems for businesses. Earlier this year, the UK’s Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) laid out plans to implement the Digital Company ID, which aims to reduce fraud and speed up digital transactions for British businesses.

The EU is also moving forward with its European Business Wallets (EWB), created to digitize operations for companies, organizations, and public administration and help them navigate cross-border operations. The Business Wallet framework could also help address the trust, identity, and accountability challenges AI agents participating in digital transactions such as payments, according to the WE BUILD consortium which is testing the European Digital Identity (EUDI) wallets.

Article Topics

digital company ID  |  digital ID infrastructure  |  digital identity  |  eSign.AI  |  Hong Kong  |  KYB  |  UAE