Diamond miner Alrosa, Chinese multinational Tencent and independent technology company Everledger have launched a new WeChat Mini Program e-commerce solution to Chinese retailers.

This demonstrates the power of blockchain technology to seamless enable the purchase with full transparency of their origin, characteristics and ownership, a statement this week said.

Created by Alrosa and Everledger, the 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, WeChat creator Tencent.

The WeChat Mini Program pilot will showcase diamonds from Alrosa, and enable full traceability from the mine to the consumer. It will be offered as a white label application programming interface for jewellery manufacturers and retailers in China who wish to offer consumers more innovative and insightful stories about their products and their brand, and in so doing, expand their e-commerce proposition.

According to the statement, 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.”

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.

Alrosa will provide information on their diamonds extracted in Russia, thereby enabling consumers to know the exact origin of each stone and have certainty around its sustainable and ethical footprint.

Alrosa's commitment to community-focused and environmentally friendly mining falls in line with Everledger's own pioneering mission to improve sustainability throughout value chains. Everledger harnesses a symphony of technologies, including blockchain, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things as well as nanotechnology to make asset provenance ever more accessible and transparent.

Alrosa diamonds head Pavel Vinikhin commented that the company “is delighted to support this WeChat Mini Program with Everledger, as it reinforces [Alrosa’s] pursuit for guaranteeing the origin of [its] products”.

Vinikhin said that the company believes that this collaboration with the most popular social media platform in China will help the company to further strengthen its sales in this region.

According to Everledger Europe head Evgeny Gokhberg, this is a “ground-breaking 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, COO Chris Taylor said that the development mobilises the company’s 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,” he adds.

According to Everledger founder and CEO Leanne Kemp, 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."