This afternoon, OpenID Foundation Japan held a press conference with its 32 member companies. It is the first time that the member companies are announced to the public. It was also announced that OpenID Foundation Japan is now accepting the members from wider community.

Also, it has announced the partnership with Liberty Alliance Japan SIG to further the harmnonization effort.

The member companies announced were:

Asahi Net (ISP)
Automation Research Associates (IT)
Cerego Japan (Education)
CyberTrust (CA)
Excite Japan (ISP/Portal)
Infoteria Corp.C (IT)
Japan Airlines International (Transportation)
Japan IBM (IT)
Japan Verisign (CA)
JCB (Credit Card)
K Opticom (ISP)
KDDI (telco)
Lin Network (IT/Consulting)
Livedoor (Portal/Web 2.0)
Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. Ltd.(Insurance)
mixi Inc. (SNS)
NEC (Manufacturing)
NEC Biglobe (ISP/Portal)
Nifty (ISP/Portal)
Nomura Research Insititute (IT/Consulting)
Oki (Manufacturing)
Rakuten (Internet Commerce/Financial)
SBI Holdings (Financial group)
Senshukai Co. Ltd.(Internet Commerce)
Seven Bank (Banking)
SixApart (Web 2.0)
Softbank BB (telco/ISP)
Sonpo Japan Systems Solution (Insurance Systems)
Taihei Computer (Financial Systems)
Technorati Japan (Web 2.0)
Yahoo! Japan (Portal)
Zakura (Web 2.0)

It is quite notable in the sense that now financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies are now on board.

In the presentation, it was announced that it is going to do the following:

[Techinical]
- Technical Seminar Series “OpenID Tech Night”
- Create Implementation Guidelines
- Discuss potential extensions
- Translation of the documents
- Tech Competition and public experimentation
- Special Interest Groups (e.g., User Interface,
assurance, payment)

[Business]
- Creation of case studies and seminars
- Taking statistics
- Business Idea Competition
- Research on the legal aspects
- Business Seminar “OpenID BizDay”

[Public Relation]
- Seminars for pres people
- Seminar with extrernal organizations
- Web site
- Helping out to promote the OpenID services
of the members.

The press conference was well attended with 45 press people including one TV (TV Tokyo).

In conjunction with it, Excite Japan has announced the availability of OpenID to its users. Also, Rakuten Kantan Kessai (Easy Payment) was publicly introduced as OpenID based service. It probably is the second instance of OpenID based service involving payment.

For more details, contact : contact@openid.or.jp