The Government of Sweden is testing land registering and recording using blockchain technology in order to digitalize real estate processes.

The country’s land registry Lantmäteriet along with Sweden-based blockchain startup ChromaWay, telecom service provider Telia and consulting firm Kairos Future have investigated the possibilities with blockchain technology for real estate transactions. The press release by ChromaWay stated that the proof of concept has been launched with a white paper and a technical demo showing the solution and the benefits for society.

“Digital documentation of property transfers and good technology will enable confirmation for all parties in a real estate transaction of highest level of security. Being able to assign pending title deed is also something of value for all parties. Everyone will benefit from this,” Mats Snäll, head of development, real estate registration, Swedish Land registry said.

The technical demo features five actors, each with an individual app. The users can follow the view of each actor, including buyer or seller of the property as well as the real estate agent, the bank or the land registry, as a property purchase takes place.

“By contributing to the creation of this demo and writing the white paper, we hope to increase knowledge in this area and stimulate innovation,” Snäll added.

Telia Company, the dominant telephone company, and mobile network operator in Sweden has also participated in the project with the technical demo.

“This is a very exciting project in the forefront of technology. It is also a project showcasing the value of cooperating in partnerships, in this case with the Swedish Land registry,” head of business development at Telia Company’s Enterprise division, Magnus Leonhardt, said. “The objective is to shorten lead times, increase security, and create customer value for the users of the services of the Land registry.”

The distributed ledger verifies the correctness of the document and the rules and order of authorization with a technology for storing digital fingerprints which are unique for every document, register and process step, hence becomes verification similar to a human fingerprint.

It reduces the risk of registering incorrect information and the inability to get title deed, the confirmation from the Land registry of ownership of the land.

“ChromaWay was the first organization in the world with solutions for registering contractual processes in the blockchain. We are proud to contribute to establish the technology for real estate transactions, an area we have been looking at for a long time,” said Henrik Hjelte, CEO of ChromaWay, talking about the company’s role in testing the technology.

The first step of the project has been completed and in the following steps, there are plans to further the development of the technology in a test environment, involving real estate agents and banks. Swedish bank Landshypotek has decided to become a partner in the next step.

“With the next generation technology, we enable real estate transactions to become more efficient, secure and easy to understand for our customers. We want to test and contribute to building an infrastructure that connects different actors and digitalizes a manual process, which today is both time consuming and complex for the customer,” said Landshypotek Bank CEO, Liza Nyberg.