Digital identity is broken - here's how to fix it for foreign students and workers

The process of verifying identity across borders is stuck in the past. If you’ve worked in higher education, immigration compliance, or international HR, you’ve seen how much effort goes into repeatedly checking the same documents: passports, visas, diplomas, enrollment letters.

You’ve also seen what happens when that data is misused or exposed.

Global mobility is increasing. So is the cost of getting identity verification wrong. But new technology - specifically Multi-Party Computation (MPC) combined with blockchain - now offers a way to verify what’s required without over-collecting personal data.

Here’s what that means in practice.

Let’s say a student from Vietnam is enrolling in a university in Denmark. She needs to show she’s over 18, has a valid visa, and holds a diploma equivalent to the Danish high school certificate.

Each step of that check involves her handing over full documents: passport, visa certificate, education records. Then she repeats the process to rent housing, open a bank account, and sign up for student services. Often with different systems and different staff each time.

That data is copied, stored, and passed around. Sometimes in emails. Sometimes in internal systems that aren’t built to hold it.

The same process happens for a Filipino construction worker in Japan. Or a Nigerian developer joining a startup in Berlin.

What’s shared is far more than what’s needed. This is how institutions end up holding copies of passports, visa letters, birth dates, and more - all because they need to check one condition.

Some countries and companies try to solve this by creating centralized identity systems. The idea is: store everything once, and let trusted parties access it. The problem is, this creates a single point of failure and overexposes every individual in the system.

Once that database is breached - or misused - all of the identities in it are at risk.

This isn’t theoretical. In 2021, the personal data of over 106 million Indonesian citizens was leaked from a national ID database. In 2023, a similar breach hit a digital ID system in India. And even in well-regulated countries, data retention practices are weak.

Privacy regulation is catching up. Under GDPR and Japan’s APPI, organizations can be fined for holding identity data they don’t need - even if the person gave it to them voluntarily.

This raises a simple question: why are we still collecting so much personal data to verify so little?

Partisia’s model flips the old logic. Instead of collecting full documents, institutions verify specific facts.

Here’s how it works.

1. A trusted issuer - a government agency, university, or certified employer - verifies a document (like a diploma or visa) and signs it cryptographically.

2. The full document stays off-chain and encrypted. Only a hashed reference and metadata (like issue date, expiration, or credential type) are logged to blockchain.

3. When another party - say, a university or an employer - needs to verify something, they don’t see the whole file. They request a condition check:

• Is this person over 18?

• Is the visa valid?

• Is the degree from a recognized institution?

4. Using Multi-Party Computation, the answer is verified across parties without revealing the original input. Only the “yes” or “no” result is returned.

5. The request and response are logged to blockchain, creating a tamper-proof audit trail. There’s no need to re-request documents, and no way to spoof or tamper with the records.

Let’s take a typical workflow for an international student applying to a university in the Netherlands:

• The student submits her passport and diploma to the issuing authority (e.g. the Ministry of Education in her home country).

• The authority signs the document and adds it to a decentralized identity wallet controlled by the student.

• The university receives a request to verify her eligibility. It sends a query to confirm that the diploma is valid and equivalent.

• MPC runs the check across the issuer’s encrypted dataset and the student’s claim.

• The university receives a confirmation - without ever seeing the underlying diploma.

Now repeat this for employers, visa services, or student housing platforms. Same approach, same benefit: faster verification, less data exposure.

We are well past the point where these problems can be ignored. According to the OECD, more than 6 million students study outside their home country each year, and that number continues to grow. Foreign workers account for over a third of labor force growth in countries like Japan, Germany, and across the Nordics. At the same time, identity fraud is becoming more common. INTERPOL reported a 20 percent increase in forged visa documents between 2022 and 2023.

On the regulatory front, the EU issued €1.6 billion in GDPR fines in 2023 alone, with many cases linked to poor handling or over-collection of personal data. The pressure on institutions is clear: they’re expected to verify identity faster, with greater accuracy, while collecting and storing far less personal information.

Adopting privacy-safe digital identity verification pays off in several ways:

• Onboarding time drops significantly. Organizations no longer need to wait for full documents or verify them manually.

• Exposure to data breaches is reduced. Less data collected means less data to lose.

• Repeat verifications are eliminated. Once a credential is logged and verified, others can check it instantly.

• Compliance risk is minimized. Organizations prove they’re collecting only what’s necessary - a key GDPR requirement.

For a university onboarding 2,000 international students a year, this can save hundreds of admin hours and eliminate document storage costs. For an employer managing work permits across APAC and the EU, it reduces internal data retention exposure and avoids legal liability.

Partisia combines secure Multi-Party Computation and blockchain anchoring to build privacy-first verification systems. Our solution doesn’t store personal data. It doesn’t ask for full records. It proves conditions - and that’s all.

Governments, schools, and employers can work together without creating honeypots of personal information. And individuals get more control over how and when their identity is verified.

This is a practical upgrade to digital identity workflows - not a theoretical one.

We’re currently partnering with universities, digital ID programs, and cross-border employment platforms to pilot this approach in Japan, Singapore, DACH, LATAM and Scandinavia.

Want to test it in your institution or platform?

If you’re onboarding foreign students, verifying work eligibility, or handling cross-border credentials, we can show you how this works in your environment - with no need to overhaul your systems.

Get in touch to request a walkthrough or pilot discussion.
No slide decks. Just a clear explanation of how this can work for your use case.

Why Partisia is a trusted partner for privacy-first identity

Partisia brings over 15 years of applied cryptography expertise, led by researchers and engineers who’ve helped define the practical use of Multi-Party Computation across industries. Our technology is built for regulated environments where privacy, security, and auditability are non-negotiable.

We don’t deal in abstract theory or hype. Our platform is already in use across finance, healthcare, and government pilots, and it’s built to integrate with the systems you already use.

We don’t store personal data, don’t require you to change your infrastructure, and don’t compromise between privacy and compliance. Every proof generated by Partisia’s platform is verifiable, tamper-resistant, and privacy-preserving by design.

If you’re handling sensitive identity workflows and want a solution that can meet regulatory standards in the EU, Japan, Singapore, or beyond - we’re the right team to work with.

Let’s make identity verification smarter, safer, and simpler.