ALROSA, Tencent and Everledger are launching a new WeChat Mini Program e-commerce solution to Chinese retailers, demonstrating the power of blockchain technology to seamlessly enable the purchase of diamonds with full transparency of their origin, characteristics and ownership history.
Created by the world’s largest diamond producer ALROSA and independent technology company Everledger, this new Mini Program pilot will put transparent and secure diamond information at the fingertips of potentially a billion active WeChat users. It is also the first product to capitalise on the synergy between Everledger and their new investor Tencent, creator of WeChat – one of the world’s largest social media and e-commerce platforms.
The WeChat Mini Program pilot will showcase diamonds from ALROSA, enabling full traceability from mine to consumer. It will be offered as a white label API for jewellery manufacturers and retailers in China who wish to offer consumers more innovative and insightful stories about their products and their brand, and so expand their ecommerce proposition. This enables a better informed and more secure purchase for consumers as well as a more seamless online-to-offline user experience. By enabling new touch points between consumers, jewellery manufacturers and retailers, the Mini Program will encourage brand differentiation in the highly competitive Chinese luxury market.
Consumers will be offered unprecedented levels of transparency and trust around the origin, characteristics and authenticity of the jewellery they purchase. Using the WeChat Mini Program on their smartphone, consumers can check an individual diamond’s full provenance and unique certificate information, purchase the diamond in the Mini Program using WeChat Pay, and also attest its ownership through the Everledger blockchain platform.
The world leader in diamond mining, ALROSA will provide information on their diamonds extracted in Russia, thus enabling consumers to know the exact origin of each stone and have certainty around its sustainable and ethical footprint. According to an independent study conducted by PwC Advisory, ALROSA is a leader among gold and diamond mining companies in terms of investments in social programs.
ALROSA’s commitment to community-focused and environmentally friendly mining has many in common with Everledger’s own pioneering mission to improve sustainability throughout value chains. Everledger harnesses a symphony of technologies, including blockchain, AI, IoT and nanotechnology to make asset provenance ever more accessible and transparent.
Pavel Vinikhin, Head of Diamonds of ALROSA (the company’s polishing branch), commented: “We are delighted to support this WeChat Mini Program with Everledger, as it reinforces our pursuit for guaranteeing the origin of our products. We believe that this collaboration with the most popular social media platform in China will help us to further strengthen our sales there.”
Evgeny Gokhberg, Head of Europe at Everledger, notes: “This is a groundbreaking initiative with the titans of the diamond and internet industries. We’re glad to partner with ALROSA, as we share the same goal of enabling more transparency to the market. By providing 100% certainty of a diamond’s origin and journey to the consumer, in an easy-to-experience online platform such as WeChat, we are confident that this innovation will set a new standard when it comes to traceability and responsible business practices.”
Commenting on the importance of this pilot for Everledger’s expansion, Chris Taylor, Chief Operating Officer, said: “This exciting development mobilizes our strong partnerships with Tencent and ALROSA to bring provenance and authenticity of diamonds to a new level of transparency in China. Making this information available to consumers’ fingertips via WeChat enables them to be sure about the source and the credentials of each item being purchased.”
Leanne Kemp, founder and CEO of Everledger, adds: “This pioneering collaboration is exactly why we launched Everledger – and it shows how far we have come since our humble beginnings in 2015. Our blockchain and IoT solutions will enable key stakeholders in the jewellery industry to bring secure and reputable information to consumers in China and beyond. The WeChat Mini Program delivers on our scalable vision for more transparent, frictionless, and sustainable value chains, providing a new benchmark for customer focus and transparency in the diamond industry.”
About Everledger:
Founded in 2015, Everledger is an independent technology company helping businesses surface and converge asset information, using a symphony of secure technologies, including blockchain, artificial intelligence, intelligent labelling and Internet of Things.
Everledger digitally streamlines its clients’ compliance processes to help them demonstrate the lifetime story of an asset with greater efficiency and accuracy. As technology partners, Everledger believes that the value of many industries will be shared by all stakeholders throughout the value chain. Everledger is certified with the ISO 27001 standard by the British Assessment Bureau.
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