A New Era of Paperless Transactions — The CID Hotel Wallet Idea by BU-ITI Students Wins the Championship at ETDA Bootcamp 2026
The era of carrying stacks of documents to complete transactions is over. The following digital transaction concept is set to usher in an age where everyone can verify and confirm their identity with confidence. The project, CID Hotel Wallet, created by Team Code In Dream (CID) — students from the School of Information Technology and Innovation — has won First Place at the ETDA Bootcamp 2026: Empowering Digital Citizens to Build Digital Trust, a competitive ideas platform for the new generation designed to foster intensive learning, hands-on practice, and the development of Digital Trust concepts. Organized by the Electronic Transactions Development Agency (ETDA), the five-day program brought together 15 student teams to participate in workshops developing use cases and building upon ideas related to Digital ID, Verifiable Credentials (VC), and Digital Document Wallets — all aimed at creating digital services that are convenient, secure, and trustworthy. Throughout the program, every team engaged in brainstorming, identifying pain points, refining business models, and experimenting with concepts, ultimately presenting their ideas and showcasing their full potential before a panel of distinguished judges — evaluated from the perspectives of technology, real-world feasibility, business models, and the vision of building Digital Trust for Thailand's digital future.
Members of Team Code In Dream (CID): Ms. Araya Chai, Mr. Thanaboon Chantasawat, Mr. Hansarak Onnoom, and Mr. Jirat Sithiwechkiat — all students majoring in Computer Science, School of Information Technology and Innovation.
The Origin of the CID Hotel Wallet Idea
"The problem we noticed is that whenever we travel and look for accommodation, such as a hotel, the pain point we encounter during check-in is being asked to hand over our national ID card for photocopying. This raises concerns about whether the hotel might use our personal data for unauthorized purposes. Another issue is the key card — if we lose it and someone picks it up, that person could potentially use it to access our room. If the hotel isn't large and only has a few rooms, randomly swiping the card on a handful of doors could easily grant access to our room. That's why we wanted to solve this problem by replacing the physical card with a digital card on our smartphones."
Challenges We Were Ready to Face
"We faced many types of challenges, because this was the very first time any of us had done something like this, so it felt very challenging to try something completely new. During the first few days of the camp, we didn't fully understand all the content — topics like VC and VP required a lot of careful re-studying and comprehension. But once we got through that first day, we started to adapt and continuously developed our knowledge. The things we didn't know on day one, we gradually absorbed from everything the camp had to offer. In the end, that knowledge came together as the CID Hotel Wallet. Most importantly, we discovered that technology like Verifiable Credentials (VC) is the most precise solution to address security and privacy concerns in today's world — because it can store personal data at the hardware level, making it ideal for storing highly sensitive information such as national ID cards and driver's licenses."
United as One
"I should mention that this was our first time working as a group. Ice and Fluke have been friends since their first year, so Ice already knew Fluke was a highly capable person from their past collaborations. Ice then invited Pap and Sun, with whom he had only worked for the very first time on this project. Fortunately, everyone was extremely cooperative. We agreed on each person's responsibilities, and everyone helped one another right up to the very last moment — staying up together working until the camp wrapped up each day. Every one of us gave it our all, both mentally and physically. We had already divided our roles early on: 'Ice' handled UX/UI Design and pitched the project; 'Fluke' served as Programmer; 'Pap' took on UX/UI Design and Frontend; and 'Sun' served as Tester. Each person performed their role excellently, and the whole team was wonderfully cooperative."
Elevating the Digital Service Experience for Thai People
"We believe that in the future, using various services should be both convenient and secure at the same time — convenience should not come at the cost of unnecessarily exposing personal information. We hope that CID Hotel Wallet will enable users to verify their identity with hotels without having to submit a photocopy of their national ID card or disclose all their information as is currently required. Through Verifiable Credential (VC) technology, users can choose to share only the information necessary for their stay. Furthermore, the Digital Key reduces the problem of lost key cards, lowers operational costs for hotel operators, and adds convenience for guests — as everything can be managed through a single smartphone. We believe that if this concept is implemented in practice, it will not be limited to hotels alone, but can also be extended to condominiums, apartment buildings, and other services requiring identity verification and access control — ultimately raising Thailand's Digital Trust standards for the future."
Finally, the CID team would like to emphasize the importance of Digital Trust as the foundational infrastructure of future software. For anyone interested or with an idea — don't wait. Start acting on it now. Begin by identifying pain points around you, then apply these technologies to address them. Don't be afraid to design new systems, and most importantly — believe in your own potential.
