China’s largest online and offline retailer, JD.com, has partnered Everledger and the world’s foremost authority on certification of diamonds, the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), as part of efforts to increase trust and transparency in diamond provenance and further confidence in online diamond purchases.

JD.com, a member of the NASDAQ100 and a Fortune Global 500 company, is not new to blockchain technology. It launched a blockchain technology platform for enterprise customers to build, host and use their own blockchain applications for more secure, transparent and convenient operations management in 2018. A year later, the e-commerce giant opened its JD Chain to businesses to provide them with access to a state-of-the-art underlying blockchain framework.

What is new now is its foray into an inter-chain collaboration with Everledger, a move that is set to enable JD.com’s more than 380 million active users as well as other consumers in China to now purchase diamonds in the e-commerce space knowing that it is safe and that they have access to accurate and authentic grading information in the supply chain.

Everledger stands to benefit more from the collaboration as it is a plus to its expansion drive into China though the chain has been working in the Chinese terrain since 2018 when it collaborated with the GIA and jewellery brand Chow Tai Fook to use blockchain technology to deliver secure, digital diamond grading reports to consumers for the first time. Certified with the ISO 27001 standard by the British Assessment Bureau, Everledger also introduced a WeChat Mini Program e-commerce solution in partnership with a leading diamond mining company, ALROSA, all of which could have been instrumental in the decision by top Chinese internet company, Tencent, to lead Everledger’s Series A round of investments last year.

The interoperability is meant to make the Everledger platform sync GIA diamond grading information to the JD Blockchain Anti-counterfeiting and Tracing Platform to provide customers with verified diamond certificates and origin information through the JD.com app and websites. The process will enable JD.com’s customers to check the validity of a GIA diamond grading report – as the world leader for determining the quality of diamonds based on its universally recognised 4Cs diamond grading methodology – and will grant them online access to valuable insights into the characteristics of their diamond before the diamond and its GIA report even arrive at their doorstep.

Coming with this unprecedented level of transparency into the quality and authenticity of the diamonds purchased online will certainly boost customers’ digital e-commerce experience, prevent grading report fraud and help build more trust in China’s online jewellery market in which digitally-savvy millennials account for 68% of diamond sales compared to only 45% worldwide.

While blockchain technology provides a credible and assured online diamond purchase experience for consumers, the cross-chain collaboration between JD.com and Everledger’s supply chain is meant for a strong diamond traceability services which aids future cross-chain or multi-chain collaborative scenarios.

It should be noted that in the JD Blockchain Technology Practice White Paper 2019 released last year, supply chain traceability is cited as one of the five scenarios for the adoption of blockchain technology. Others are digital evidence storage, trusted network, financial technology and value innovation.