VDS – More Than Just a Low-Cost Alternative to Document Microchips

The new visible digital seals (VDS), originally adopted by countries for travel document verification, are now gaining wider international acceptance as affordable and efficient solutions to the global challenge of providing travellers with an internationally verifiable proof of health. Furthermore, the use of VDS technology outside of the travel domain is also becoming more broadly recognised.

This article takes a look these developments, but also goes ‘back to basics’ by explaining what a VDS actually is and where it originates from.

What is VDS?

A visible digital seal (also called VDS or digital seal) is defined as a standardised, structured data set containing a payload (the actual data itself) and its signature (or ‘seal’), which comes from the issuer of that data. The data and the signature are then encoded into a 2D barcode which can be either printed on a document or displayed electronically.