Adedayo Adebajo
Many have asked how they can link their businesses with the prevailing blockchain technology and benefit from it. They want to know how their businesses can thrive with the DLT that’s so hyped locally and internationally. These questions are even more relevant than ever with the current situation of the pandemic COVID-19 that affects the world globally.
The current socio-economic realities brought about by coronavirus raise exponentially the needs to direct all businesses and corporate existence to online services. It raises exponentially the need to direct all businesses and corporate existence to online services. Traditionally, businesses can’t be conducted with much distancing as all senses are required up close to establish trust in the product and the parties involved before concluding the deal. But now, with the prevailing required distancing to stay healthy and important resistance to touch objects, companies without innovative ways to sustain their businesses are having a hard time as many are folding up after downsizing.
The advent of online commerce stores among all and their many unexpected or unanticipated successes shows that Africa is ready for the electronic world. Things only be done right and enabling for customers to patronise. One other advantage about digitising a business environment for goods and services is the undisputed fact that it turns the enterprise from local to international removing its operation from the confinements and putting it on the global map and visibility. Blockchain technology today provides more edges against the usual single centralized server digital platforms in several ways.
There are a couple of misconceptions that need to be understood and dispensed with when the adoption of the technology is considered. First, the idea that all blockchain platforms are great, you may want to look beyond the great marketing if you are ready to put your business on the platform. There are only a few that are worthy of consideration at the moment.
Also, no such thing as fully complete system but there are few great plug and play blockchain platforms. Again, no blockchain platform is a magical platform that will make you rich overnight. It all still boils down to solutions you deploy and if they are worth anyone’s attention and patronage.
It depends on the edge your business can have over others by:
1. Making it easy for online customers to patronise in a secured environment.
2. Easing the traceability of goods and origin including the involved financial transactions for all.
3. Ease of loyalty points issuance with unbeatable transparency.
4. Cheap/free transaction fees with lesser middlemen in the transaction processes.
5. Unmonopolised and undiscriminating platform that promotes your product the same as others.
Majority of confusion comes in two forms for a public blockchain solution. First is developing the solution and the second has to do with the node networks for those fully enlightened about what they are doing. With the right solution or platform, these major concerns become a thing of the past. With a childchain solution adoption, these two are solved outrightly at least on Ardor platform specific childchains.
With this, your nodes are running even prior to the deployment of your solution based on the existing Ardor hundreds of blockchain nodes across the globe. Another interesting opportunity that comes with the solution is the customizable menu of interesting applications and usable solutions to aid your company’s online activities and customer satisfactions. We will consider a couple of industry starting with the Fintech and jointly see how they can benefit from the technology considering the prevailing crisis and dire need for supporting technology.
Fintech industry solution:
The Fintech space today arguably strives to replace the old banking systems but not the bank itself. One major flaw the banks possess today is heavily relying on paper transactions which often require physical contacts. What are the basic banking activities we have today and the parts most Fintech are competing to do better? The functions can be classified basically into two, Primary which include Accepting deposits, Granting advances and Secondary which includes both Agency functions and Utility functions. But to every man or customer of a bank, they are an entity that keeps funds safe and provide option to withdraw the exact or advances in loans all with an attached varying fee.
It is a known attribute of all banks to utilize customer’s funds in business activities necessary to run and sustain the bank but most becomes faulted due to excessive bad loans both to normal customers and insiders, inappropriate risk management decisions, unsupportive regulatory issues among others. These demerits that apply to the rigid walls within which banks operate mostly do not apply in the tech space where companies offer similar financial services but only online.
The advantage of taking the finance and banking space out of the confinement to strictly online business remains the major upgrade they offer ahead of the traditional banks. They provide an edge against all obstacles placed by both distance and time and provide ease of banking and accessibility to funds. Nevertheless, more can still be done.
With the blockchain technology as an extensive fintech enhancement, banks are not eliminated in the whole financial processes, but interactions with them can be reduced to almost nothing through the use of geographically unrestricted cryptocurrencies accepted everywhere to transact in seconds. This means, no POS transactions issues, no bank transfer issues, no ATM issues, no inter-bank transfer delay problems. It will just be a fast business transaction where every involved party smiles away. It provides the required transparency and trust, to truly put customer’s funds in his/her total control and only provides an avenue that allows ease of spending, saving and proper utilization of their financial power.
The blockchain technology isn’t plagued with the single point of attack and failure as exhibited among all other known platforms today. It utilizes a distributed immutable ledger that writing and recording are only done by consensus of all connected nodes which in this case can be all customers who witness the transactions from the genesis and can validate or testify to the authenticity of all subsequent transactions. This reduces the time to verify in a business environment, mitigates the lack of trust among partners and of course, provides several layers of security of platform, privacy of personal information and immutability of trusted recorded data against external attacks.
Today with an additional layer of blockchain technology, Fintech industries can utilise the lightweight smart contract, oracle contract among others to provide self-executable actions and automate some recurring and even basic decision makings adequately with no human biases. They can automate giving of loyalty points, approval of loans, automate withdrawals with in-built smart contracts programmable by the user to stop some certain transactions. Trace all transactions within the network to curb some heinous acts and finally provide an environment where customers can completely trust that nothing hidden is happening to their funds outside the agreed activities. Provide all these and many more without having to worry about coordinated broad attacks, failed transactions and platform breakdowns.
As a fintech startup or platform, have you considered the possibility of having a fully functional decentralized platform, marketplace, insurance, loan services among others? With several advantages attached to these not limited to reduced hands of deck, increased revenue and yet cheaper services and more satisfied customers. These decentralized platforms will soon replace what we have and win with the single preamble— “Decentralised” fintech is the option. Becoming a childchain is the best option out there at the moment on the multichain platform capable of launching your company as easy as any unique turnkey solution. Consider checking the Ardor blockchain platform by Jelurida Swiss SA and endeavor to have your Developers and other members of the team compare to other platforms before making your final choice.
Adedayo Adebajo is the Managing Director of Jelurida Africa DLT
