Growing businesses demand the need to bring revolutionary changes in all the aspects of their businesses as time and technology progress. When it comes to the field of health care, the urgency of growth escalates to higher levels. Quality healthcare services backed up with the latest technology is the need for today.

Moreover, the healthcare system landscape is shifting towards a more patient-centric approach which focuses on two major elements namely, affordable treatment and apt healthcare facilities at all times.

The Current Healthcare System

Keeping processes intact and still providing effective patient care is not feasible in many cases. The major issue in providing quality healthcare services is the gap between providers and payers. The dependency of middlemen in the supply chain makes it even worse.

The existing healthcare ecosystem cannot be considered complete as multiple players in the system do not have a system in place for smooth process management. Moreover, it is also termed as inadequate for handling the exchange of information and requires certain major changes.

The misuse of available data is preventing healthcare organisations from delivering appropriate patient care and high-quality services for the sake of better health. Despite being fairly efficient in terms of economy, these organisations are not able to fulfills the needs of patients.

Many healthcare facilities today are still dependent on outdated systems for keeping patient records.

These systems hold the functionality of keeping local records of the patient data. This can make it difficult for the doctor to diagnose which is time-consuming for the doctor and tedious for the patients too. Due to this, the cost of maintaining a patient-oriented business is increased considerably.

Issues prevailing in the current healthcare sector are not limited. They keep on growing with high-intensity with time. The need for a technically advanced system is undeniable. Consider the problem of drug counterfeiting which leads to losses of around $200 million. It could be diminished dramatically if a system with accurate tracking features is put into place in the supply chain.

Another time-consuming and tedious process that results in high costs in the healthcare industry is Health Information Exchange. Since patients don’t have any control over their data, the chances of identity thefts, financial data crimes and spamming are increasing every day.

Despite having gadgets like computers and mobile phones at every healthcare facility these days, we’re still not able to collect, analyse, secure and exchange data seamlessly. Therefore, the healthcare system today not only needs an advance system rather it also needs a system that is smooth, transparent, economically efficient and easily operable.

The Blockchain Solution

According to the Gartner Hype Cycle, the Blockchain technology has gone beyond the “innovation trigger” and is at “peak of inflated expectations.” It holds the potential to disrupt different industries such as finance, banking, supply chain as well as healthcare. But before diving right into the details of how blockchain is affecting healthcare, let’s understand what is it first.

Blockchain is one of the most disruptive technologies that has taken the world by storm these days. A blockchain is nothing but a distributed ledger that keeps track of transactions and activities happening throughout the network. The most unique factor of a blockchain is that once a piece of information is added to the distributed ledger, no one can alter it. The information stored on a blockchain is absolutely secure in its entirety. In order for anyone to make a change in one block, it is mandatory to make changes to all the subsequent blocks after it.

The working of a blockchain relies on three major principles that have existed for long. Compiled working of these principles allows blockchain to provide secure and safe digital relationships.

Private key cryptography

In private key cryptography, a secret key is used as a variable along with an algorithm to encrypt and decrypt the code. The key is kept secret even when the algorithm is not. In a blockchain, a reference of the secure digital identity is created, however, the transactions are on the open network.

Distributed ledgers

A distributed ledger also known as a shared ledger is referred to as a consensus of shared records. In DLT, the ledger is updated in real time and no central authority is held responsible to maintain the ledger. Instead, network participants keep the ledger updated. Any changes made in the ledgers are reflected within seconds.

Authentication

Authentication is a process that proves genuineness. In a Blockchain, all the transactions are authenticated before getting added to the chain. This process takes place through algorithms that validate and verify all the transactions. Once the information is encrypted and digitally signed and stored, the authenticity is sealed.

Healthcare firms, technology innovators and the members of overall healthcare sector are looking out for ways to find out what’s possible in the current times and what blockchain could do to make healthcare better and affordable in the future.

Blockchain Panacea for Healthcare Problems

Blockchain has the power to bring out a massive breakthrough in the healthcare ecosystem as it can easily bring specific changes in the healthcare management of the patient. With the aid of this technology, the power will come back to people’s hands.

Meaning that individuals will be responsible for handling their own records thus, getting the overall control of their own data. The technology holds the ability to successfully improve patient care quality while maintaining the funds at a reasonable rate. All the challenges and hindrances that occur in multiple level authentication can be eliminated through blockchain. With the increasing adoption rate, Blockchain has made its way to the healthcare sector. Even in its beginning stage, the technology is being positively accepted by people in the healthcare ecosystem.

According to a study conducted by IBM, around 16% of healthcare executives are determined about their plans to implement blockchain solution in their work this year, while around 56% expected to adopt blockchain by the year 2020.

The comprehensive vision for blockchain to disrupt the healthcare sector in the coming times would be to resolve issues that afflict the current system. Imagine a healthcare system where all the information is easily accessible by doctors, patients and pharmacists at any given time.

Blockchain allows the creation and sharing of a single common database of health information.

This system would be accessible by all the entities involved in the process no matter which electronic medical system they use. This offers higher security and transparency while allowing doctors find more time to spend on patient care and their treatment. Moreover, it will also enable better sharing of statistics of researches which, in turn, would facilitate clinical trials and treatment therapies for any rare disease.

In a healthcare system, smooth data sharing between healthcare solution providers can lead to accuracy in diagnosis, effective treatments, and cost-effective ecosystem. The day-to-day growth of patient data requires proper utilisation of resources in order to make the most effective utilisation of the insights discovered through it.

Blockchain for healthcare allows multiple entities of the healthcare ecosystem to stay in sync and share data on a commonly distributed ledger. With such a system in place, the participants can share and keep a track of their data and other activities happening in the system without having to look out for additional options for integrity and security.

As per the requirements and access permissions for the network participants, two types of blockchains can be used:

1. Permissioned Blockchains

These type of blockchains, as the name suggests allow real-time data to be shared between the participants of the network only on a permissioned basis. A permissioned blockchain is a closed network where all the participants involved in the system have access to the network. It is built and used inside organisations and enterprises in order to exchange information and make transactions securely. Once a transaction is processed through consensus, it will be treated as a permanent record and get added as a new block to the existing blockchain.

2. Permissionless Blockchains

Permission-less blockchains provide access to anybody for creating an address of their own and begin interacting with the network. One of the most popular examples of a permission-less system is the internet which allows anyone to create their own website. Similarly, in a permission-less blockchain, anyone on the network can interact with other participants on the same network by creating their address on the network.

Among the two of these, private or permissioned blockchains can be effectively used in healthcare in order to make the right decisions within the healthcare ecosystem. The use of Blockchain technology in healthcare holds a lot of potentials as it is being explored further. Holding properties like immutability, trustworthiness, and decentralisation, the distributed technology of blockchain provides the healthcare sector with opportunities to detect fraud, reduce operational costs, smoothen processes, remove duplication of work and apply transparency in the healthcare ecosystem.

“Blockchain technology may not be the panacea for healthcare industry challenges, but it holds the potential to save billions of dollars by optimising current workflows and disinter-mediating some high-cost gatekeepers.”

–Frost & Sullivan research for Blockchain Technology in Global Healthcare (2017–2025)

Blockchain Applications for Healthcare

Having explored the importance of blockchain technology in the healthcare sector along with the changes that it could bring, here are a few use cases that utilise the potential of the technology and could make the healthcare industry more accessible, secure and reliable.

1. Population Health Data

Population health data refers to the medical information of a particular demographic. For example, it may be health risk information for women suffering from thyroid in the group of 25-40 years. To understand the risks across a diverse population, the data is usually provided in an anonymised form and no names are revealed in these cases.

When it comes to population health management, the largest challenges faced till date are data security, share-ability, and interoperability. If the patient information is isolated and stored on multiple systems that do not allow the smooth exchange of information, the population health data sets across various patient sets would become scarce. Blockchain provides a reliable solution to this specific challenge. When applied correctly, blockchain will allow improved Security, data sharing, interoperability, data integrity and Real-time update and access.

Using blockchain technology can allow people to participate in population health studies to and monetize their data in the form of tokens. Moreover, better data and sharing of population health data can improve care delivery across diverse populations. With more data sets, the usage of new technologies like AI and ML would be possible which will result in discovering widespread risks of population health.

2. Secure Healthcare Setups

The current healthcare system and organisations operate through one single central database. This database is managed by one entity in the organisations. With this approach, the point of failure also comes to one single point. In such cases, if a hacker or anti-social element attacks the system, he/she can access the overall database and would put the patients as well as the organisation in jeopardy.

Blockchain can be utilised in order to prevent the internal infrastructure of an organisation. A large organisation with multiple independent actors having different levels of access on a blockchain ledger with encryption embedded within the blocks will save organisations from external threats and attacks. If a blockchain network is implemented correctly in a healthcare Organisation, it would prevent such ransom attacks as well as other issues like data corruption or hardware failure.

3. Patient Payments Through Cryptocurrencies

Another appealing benefit of Blockchain in healthcare is the use of cryptocurrencies as payments in place of cash or fiat money. Cash medical practices are in prevalence however, the health care costs are not defined as such. Even today 5-10% of cases come from fraud in terms of money and billing unperformed services. In the US alone, a fraud of $30 million was detected in the year 2016.

Through blockchain systems and applications in place, the possibility of providing the right solutions and eliminating frauds has increased. Bill processing automation will remove the third parties from the chain and decrease the overall administrative costs. Moreover, when larger institutions will adopt payment processing through cryptocurrencies, a major shift would take place. Each penny paid to the Medicare would be tracked and ensure that no frauds are made during the process.

4. Drug Traceability

Counterfeiting of drugs along with fake drugs in the supply chain constitutes a major loss of billions of dollars per year.

According to a HRFO report, almost 10 to 30 percent of drugs in developing countries are not original. While the U.S. healthcare industry alone bears a loss of approximately $200 billion annually due to these issues.

As these stats showcase, drug counterfeiting causes deaths of hundreds of people who take the wrong medicine. Dissemination of counterfeit drugs is one serious problem in the pharmaceutical space.

The usage of private blockchains in which the control is in the hands of a central authority would make sense in such cases. When such companies are given access to the specific drug blockchain, they would have a proof that the drugs manufactured by them are authentic.

In such private drug blockchains, the pharmaceutical companies have the right to choose among actors of the supply chain who will be acting as miners be it, manufacturers, distributors or retailers. As authorised according to the position on the supply chain, every individual can have different rights or accessibility options. For example, while labs can register drugs, the wholesalers have the permission to verify transactions. Moreover, every block containing the drug information will have a hash attached to it which will be linked to another block. When the drug moves along the supply chain among different entities, it can be easily tracked.

Moreover, the feature of data transparency in a blockchain system can help to find the complete path of origin, thus, helping in eradicating the circulation of fake drugs.

5. Clinical Trials & Data Security

In order to conduct a clinical trial, huge amounts of data sets are required. The researchers focus on these data sets and conduct regular tests under different circumstances to generate reports, statistics, and effectiveness ratio. Based on these reports, the data is analysed and further decisions are taken.

However, most of the pharmaceutical companies today show interest in recording the results that can assure certain benefits for their firms. For such cases, the researchers often hide or modify their collected data and information in order to change the outcome.

To make the clinical trials more fair and transparent, researchers can make use of blockchain technology. It can help to record secure, unbiased and transparent clinical trials.

For the companies who believe in conducting authentic clinical trials, everything needs to be secure and transparent. To accomplish this, the documents created and used in the process need to be time stamped. These include informed consent, research plans, regulations and study protocol. This means that the documents should have a proof and details of their creation time. For pre-planned endpoints, it is especially important to keep this information timestamped. It is a proof that showcases that the agreement was there even before the trial started.  

Blockchain technology would add to the credibility of clinical trials and results. These documents can be stored as smart contracts on the blockchain acting as the digital thumbprints. This catalog of documents will reduce audit costs, review of files, lost document issues and frauds. The blockchain will also keep the supply chain management of the pharma as well as the accountability of drugs tracking.

6. Patient Data Management

HIPPA has strict regulations around the privacy of a patient’s data. It requires PHI (Patient health information) to be secure from breaches and modification. Despite the security regulations, patient data cannot be restricted. Healthcare being a complex system with multiple entities requires a patient to share their data and medical records.

For instance, the patients have to share their health-related information with the doctor as well as the providers. Additionally, the increase in the number of patients has resulted in more and more data management by the healthcare providers. This growing data leads to difficulties in managing patient information within hospitals and clinics.

Introducing blockchain to this data-centric system resolves many issues. A blockchain system in place for patient data management would create a hash for individual patient health information blocks. A collective system would constitute a patient ID on a theoretical basis. A blockchain system would even allow patients to reveal their necessary data to third parties while keeping their identity secret. The time limit and access permissions for data sharing with third parties could also be controlled by the patients.

Conclusion

Potential of blockchain for healthcare highly depends on the acceptance of the new technology within the healthcare ecosystem. There are certain concerns and speculations regarding Blockchain’s integration with current healthcare systems and its cultural adoption. Yet, the technology is still popular in the healthcare sector.

It has taken the healthcare industry by storm over the past year. Many solutions are being developed to adopt it. With so many potential use cases and possibilities, blockchain is sure to disrupt the healthcare landscape for good.

If you need any more assistance regarding this, just shoot an email to us at mayank@engineerbabu.com. Or you can directly get in touch with us right now!

Recommended Reading

• Blockchain Technology Explained
• Top 10 Reputable Blockchain Development Companies
• How is Blockchain Revolutionizing Banking and Financial Markets

The post Blockchain in Healthcare: Opportunities, Challenges, and Applications appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

Here’s our comprehensive analysis…

Potential Problems Due to this Model:

• A considerable amount is unstructured and unactionable in communication
• Lost in Translation
• Chances of Skipping interaction
• Manual digitization by all parties after receiving copies
• Byzantine General Problem (No trust of information)
• Email/Interactions don’t become generally enforceable law.
• Expected time of Delivery and promised quality is compromised due to clear communication.
• Every third party’s company is a black box for the enterprise. It is just based on expensive agreements, and good faith business is running.
• All data and commitment supplied by third parties have financial incentives involved. So the probability of over-committing and under-performing is very high.
• No single version of the truth with internal teams, enterprise level or third-party levels.

Challenges of Adopting Blockchain in Enterprises Data

• Hacking/Phishing Attempts to System and Data
• Encrypted Data might get decrypted after a few years. Due increase in Computing power of solve keys. Quantum computer posses that threat.
• Supply chain stakeholders business data, employee data, and systems are costly. It will have more probability and chances of attack due to cost/benefits from Competitors/Hackers.
• Supply chain stakeholders and ex-Employees can have threats to Blockchain System. Due to consensus and web access during the time of transition. Blocks inside Blockchain are immutable.
• The consistency of System is based on permission and consensus. It is a dynamic model, which can change and evolve in the supply chain network.
• Stores and Brands will have more transparency and information of chain. They might use this information for reducing the profit margin for other stakeholders.
• Planning in every phase should be strong and future ready. Otherwise, it will become obsolete, cumbersome, costly and time consuming to upgrade.
• Upgrades are tough in blockchain. Due to immutability and every new version will have different Data Block Format. It will make the system hard to upgrade over time.
• Fraud/Risk/Push/Gaps exploited by Stakeholders

Few Solutions:

• Selecting Private Blockchain with strong fundamental architecture.
• We will select private blockchain solution which is resilient, data critical for time, no loss to business and trade secret.
• Selection of private blockchain solution should be focused on big three companies. IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon. We need upgrades and security updates.
• Small companies might shut down or have problems in securing the Blockchain database. The process of upgrading is highly required by platform.
  
• Hacking, decryption and security breach should not affect trade secrets.
• A pseudo naming convention for all stakeholders, order ids, item names and details with encryption and permission-based access should be used.
• Consensus Model should be applied for adding, editing and stage crossing blocks. Consensus parties should be decided based on the hierarchy of parties and decision permission for that block.
• Every Consensus Blocks will always be controlled by stakeholders 2-5 employees per Stage. We will not give control to Suppliers to edit expected time Deliver (ETD) without Manufacturer permission or Manufacturer to edit expected time deliver (ETD) without Brand Approval.
  
• Controlling Access, Permission for reading, writing, and editing based on need-to-know and involvement is essential.
• In case of an upgrade, the code should have a version number in each block to understand the algorithm and study those blocks. At a level of inconsistency, we need flags and systems.
• Upgrades will always be deployed at network start genesis chain start level, which is order from store or brand. If there are old orders, which have not reached their conclusion (Delivery). Then those chains will follow old function in data block process flow. (It is a complicated process, and creative ideas are needed.)

  

Supply Chain in 2025:

• Stakeholders have to open data to work with each other. Stakeholders like suppliers, manufacturers, shipping companies, brands, and stores. It will create a chain of trust and confidence to do business together.
  
• Suppliers have to open current raw material and finished good inventory to Manufacturers before purchasing order. It will be based on a need-to-know basis for the manufacturer. The supplier will need bank balance assurance from Manufacturers with all future commitment included.
  
• Manufacturers have to open production line data, human resources data, the condition of human resources, waste management and the actual time of delivery updates at a real time. Manufacturers will need bank balance assurance from brands with all future commitment included.
  
• Shipping companies have to open capability and capacity data for better booking. They have to provide real-time data of ship/air positions to supply chain. Shipping companies will need bank balance assurance from parties.
  
• Brands have to open their purchasing power to make manufacturer assured of payments and faster delivery. They expect same from stores.
  
• Stores have to open data of user behavior with brands in the deeper level like style trail room visits, a style which has more hand touch and sales graph with user profiling. Brands will deliver more information about ad campaign performance, digital eCommerce performance, and planning process.
  
• Once this data will open, and a new consensus model will evolve at every stage. Then smart contracts will start to remodel in the supply chain industry. e.g, If you deliver on this date automatically, payment will be made on this date, and if you delay by one day without approval, 0.1% will be deducted off the invoice amount as penalty.
  
• We will move away from paper contracts, and configurable contracts will evolve in the industry with standard codes. Both parties will verify smart contract code and accept. Once accepted it would be implemented in that stage or at purchasing order.
  
• It has to record a chain of events by a machine to machine, machine to software and software to software interaction. Humans will interact with natural language, and it has to be converted to actionable items, event recording, stage shifting and consent given/not given the model.
  
• Consensus Model will be based on the Byzantine General problem. We need to get consent from parties involved to change stage. It is also based on rights they will have for voting in stage transfer or not. e.g, Change of date for the expected time of delivery cannot be done, supplier. The manufacturer can only do it with internal teams consent.
  

Just Imagine, all this data is shared between companies and third parties with machines, ERP softwares, IoT devices, emails, excels sheets, CCTV and images with a need-to-know basis and preserving trade secrets.
Currently, only blockchain can solve the problem of integrating all this data with consensus between parties and immutability for fraud-proof.

Basic guidelines for Designing

This solution list of the foundation of product development. We have to achieve all the mentioned points in various phases of the project.

• Truth is Key to unlock the potential of organizations
• One version of Truth
  • Truth is defined by the maximum ability to know reality. Rest is subjective truth, stories and the second version of truth.
  • Supplier accepting the expected date of delivery (ETD) should have double confirmation System. So we have a very sure commitment from Suppliers.
  • We should never apply double confirmation for Brand. They are a prime source of truth for Manufacturing companies. Editing of ETD rights should be always allowed to Brand.
• One version of Truth can be derived only by knowing chain of events and consensus of that event with timestamp stored with immutability.
  • Every interaction with stakeholders, internal teams, top management is event. It should be tracked and inserted in chain.
  • Few events will require double confirmation before entering in the chain. As events are immutable. We need them to be double confirmed with the event when the stage is crossed from one set to another. e.g Supplier shipped material from China.
  • Extracting one version of Truth/Chain incase of any conflict with Store/Brand/Manufacturer/Supplier/Internal Team
• Segregation of Information based on necessity.
  • Cost is sensitive data but time is critical performance data, which needs to free flow from Store/Brand/Manufacturer/Supplier/Internal Team.
  • Two level of data encapsulation and security is needed when we will insert supplier, manufacturer, Brand, Shipping and Stores data in Blockchain.
• Non-Sensitive information in Blockchain.
  • We will never insert Encrypted or Unencrypted sensitive information about price/cost in Blockchain. (Cryptography can be broken with Quantum Computer or Future technology or Hacking or Platform Bug of Blockchain. We should never be vulnerable to that hacking in future. It can be cracked after 20 years when technology is ready. It will become an embarrassing situation for stakeholders. Precaution is better with Blockchain)
  • Time ETD is non-sensitive information but within the ecosystem of stakeholders.
• Information Distribution in real time
  • We have only Information Asset within the supply chain network. We need this to free flow for best results. Information like time, raw material, ETD for order and time-sensitive information within the network. ETD and ETA should be strict and enforced across teams and need to know basis.
  • Top management should receive focused information to all stakeholders.
• Alert system for better knowledge and monitoring (Email Focused)
  • Open/Reply/Forwarding Emails from stakeholders as Analytics and Knowledge.
• Agile and Actionable information to find gaps before it is too late.
  • Timeline strict project should have special considerations in System with more strict Alert systems.
  • Stakeholders with track record is important. We can plan penalties for not responding and delaying in system.
  • Department/Head/Employees agility should be tracked and rewarded.
  • Top management should be kept in driving seat rather than receiving information from the hierarchy.
  • Predictive Logic: Foundation of this logic will be written on stakeholders past record of supplied orders. Assuming we have low ranking suppliers (low ranking means delaying inventory suppliers) in particular brands. Then we should focus on them as well as orders.
  • System of every order with supplier/manufacturer past record can give you likelihood of order completion on time. It is probability theorem but effective for triggering danger orders. It will need machine learning on past data and conversation.

Mode of Communication of Stakeholders

Store, Brand, Manufacturer, Supplier, and Shipping companies.

1. Email(Heavy used system with maximum inefficiency)
2. Image Proof/CCTV footage(Applied to all stakeholders.)
3. Excel Sheet (Non-standard Formats and highly different across emails and ecosystem.)
4. RFID(Complicated and different implementation by each stakeholder. Data planning is needed for it.)
5. ERP(Structured Data and System. Sharing them on blockchain will be key.)
6. IOT and Custom Devices(Monitoring, Analysing, Measuring, Access control data can also be inserted in blockchain to derive chain of events.)
7. Open APIs for Shipping companies and other stakeholders (It is entirely dependent on stakeholders implementation. Eg. Fedex Tracking API is easy. But shipping companies is tough.)

Process Flow

1. Order from Brand to Manufacturer
2. Requesting Quote from Suppliers
3. Receiving Quotes
4. Negotiation and discussions for best ETD and Price with Suppliers
5. Suppliers Selection
6. Generating order for each supplier.
7. Account team will create Invoice and send Suppliers.
8. Supplier delivers Quantity and Quality approved raw materials to shipping companies.
9. Shipping received for manufacturing.

Planning Process for development

• Methods for Interaction between stakeholders and departments.
• Trade Secrets outline, what needs to protect in the supply chain. It can be in database list of the supplier, manufacturer, brand owner or store owners. It also includes employees data, email flow, process flow, etc.
• A detailed structure of involved stakeholders, teams, roles, hierarchy structure, user roles, daily interaction and flow of information and data needs to be planned before executing who, Does What, Reports to Whom, Where, When and How. Then teams can create proper roles and data packet they are generating in System.
•  Data Packet Design for Blocks in the chain
• Data Block insertion rights, editing rights, and updates rights.
• Data Block planning, stage segregation systems, Flags from one status to another, highlighting blocks and confirmation of stage crossing.
• Blockchain Nodes for team stage crossing and coloring system with a satisfaction level.
• Consensus between team for crossing stage, creating orders, ETD and actionable buttons will be planned.
• Conflict Data Blocks inside the chain. They need to be highlighted in UI with actions to resolve by consensus with parties involved.
• Screen planning, Tree System planning, Stakeholders wise Access to blocks.
• Alert System configuration based on order, supplier, manufacturer, brands, stores, and shipping companies.
• Security of data and the entire system. We need to write all possible hacks, security threats, access control threats, data stealing within teams, consensus breaking and leakage by stakeholders.
• Planning for double confirmation and blocks, which need them. Generally, it will be used for stage crossing.
• Upgrades for the entire chain. In case of Upgrades, we need to plan for future with Data Blocks, Network, and Process flow.

Example of Data Blocks and Stages.

We are covering a small part of the chain. So we have a better idea chain shape and method. We have taken the process from brand ordering to manufacturer and manufacturing orders to suppliers.

RFID Data in the same Blockchain

We are giving you an example from a Brand perspective. If Brand is giving an order to Manufacturer following data should be added in Blockchain for better tracking and following up with teams.
The small process explained for RFID implementation and data generation:

• Raw Material entry in Production
• Production started
• Finished Production in Factory
• Factory Shipped to Forwarding Warehouses
• Shipments
  •  Shipment to the destination in Direct
  • Shipment to US Warehouses
  • Received in US Warehouses
  • Shipping to Client to Stores
  • Return Shipment

The chain will be having all data blocks coming from RFID devices and stitched to the chain. This information will be provided with a timestamp in it.

Conclusion

We have to understand blockchain from philosophical level during planning and implementation. It is about companies opening up their data to other stakeholders for mutual benefits and automating processes. Many processes and orders are pending and waiting in the long supply chain due to approvals and confusions if we share that information with other stakeholders concerned with it. Then we can have accountability and streamline the process. There should be explicit consensus/agreement between quality, quantity and time between stakeholders in case of any editing in orders. It should be approved by both parties. It can reduce pressure from the supply chain.

“Information collected from various sources should be aligned for knowing one version of truth and transparency in the ecosystem without disturbing trade secrets of each stakeholder.”

Recommended Read: 

• How is Blockchain Disrupting the Supply Chain Industry
• Top 10 Reputable Blockchain Development Companies
• Blockchain Technology Explained: Introduction, Meaning, and Applications
• Blockchain in Healthcare: Opportunities, Challenges, and Applications

The post How Can Blockchain Remodel Supply Chain? A Comprehensive Analysis appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

The world today;
Is experiencing a dramatic change in age demographics. Considering America as a prime example, it is estimated – In the year 2019, the group of people of age older than 65 will outnumber the group of those younger than five.As life expectancy increases, the number of people living with different chronic conditions and functional impairments, for instance, dementia, diabetes and the inability to manage household chores with growing age are further increasing.
People belonging to the “old age” group are more likely to suffer from chronic diseases and require more care and attention. In such times, the need of the hour is to discover and develop solutions that ensure people’s healthcare expectations, preferences as well as their needs. This leads us to envision the potential of ‘healthcare at home services’ that can benefit people of all age groups to take care of their medical situations independently with ease.
With rapidly progressing technology, the potential for transforming healthcare at home will also grow tremendously. Healthcare organizations and institutions will be able to provide exceptional levels of patient care along with the comfort of home. This will promote greater patient satisfaction and improvement of cost control in healthcare services. As per M&M, home healthcare is expected to reach $349.8 Billion from $227.5 Billion by 2020 globally, at a CAGR of 9.0% during the forecast period.

Elderly and ailing patients might not have the resources and energy to visit doctors every now and then, which consequently leads them to choose the option of healthcare at home. Due to this, healthcare companies are always competing with each other in the race to adapt to the increasingly digitized world.
Specifically talking about the US, the healthcare organizations are well aware of the issues prevailing such as the need for increased care for home treatments of the aging population, mostly due to mobility and budget issues. The only savior that can aid in such a situation is technology, given that it is implemented correctly.
While working with technology, it is vital for home healthcare organizations to choose the right option to achieve the desired results, such as increasing efficiency while providing patients with the utmost care and affordable solutions.

What Constitutes the Spectrum of Home Healthcare?

Other than providing healthcare services for the elderly, healthcare at home is also useful for patients who need constant medical care and treatment once they get back to their homes from the medical facility or hospital. Home healthcare makes it possible for people to receive a variety of medical services in their homes. Healthcare at home can be beneficial for people dealing with different conditions. Whether the patient is an individual recovering from an illness after a hospital stay or someone who is disabled, old or suffering from a chronic disease, healthcare at home can be the right option in such situations.
Healthcare at home allows people to get any kind of treatment available; be it therapeutic or nursing or even routine medical assistance. According to a survey by Canadian Home Care Association, with the aid of healthcare services at home, there has been a decline of around 72% in emergency department visits, this has also resulted in the reduction of hospital admission rates.

Healthcare at home comprises of the following factors:
• Home Assistance
The primary focus of healthcare at home is for people to get medical support at home rather than spending time in a medical facility. Healthcare at home allows people to get the freedom of staying at their residential facility rather than opting for long-term nursing care at hospitals. With home assistance, medical professionals can assist patients who are incapable of conducting daily activities with help for tasks like food preparation, basic housekeeping, and emergency measures. This can be done until the patient can do all such tasks by themselves.
Home assistance also allows medical professionals to take care of medical and psychological assessments while allowing individuals to learn about pain management, disease education, and physical therapy, etc.
• Home Care Agencies
Home care agencies keep their focus on providing medical expertise in the form of healthcare professionals at a patient’s home. In such cases, medical professionals or doctors are sent to a patient’s house to treat their injuries or illnesses. Once the health condition of the patient is restored, the need for medical professionals end and their services are discontinued thereafter.
• Home Health Care Workers
Other than expert doctors, there are certain cases where other medical professionals are involved in home healthcare programs such as nurses, physiotherapist, nutritionist, occupational therapist, etc. The demand for such professionals is expected to significantly increase in the next decade as people of all age groups are growing more conscious of healthy lifestyles.

Benefits of Healthcare at Home

Healthcare at home can be beneficial for many reasons including but not limited to the following ones. Even when the patient is not in a condition to visit the hospital, home healthcare professionals can be of great help. They are specially trained and qualified to provide treatment while assessing the safety as well as risks at the patient’s home itself. They can also offer simple suggestions and corrections for the patient’s well-being, such as the medicines to keep in handy for emergencies or recommendations for immediate ambulance assistance etc.

1. Activities of daily living are supported in-home care too. These activities can include any basic necessity such as bathing, medicine reminders as well as grooming, etc. Such facilities allow elderly patients to get regular help along with their personal care requirements while maintaining a high quality of life for them.
2. Expert nursing care at home is one of the significant benefits of healthcare services at home. Skilled medical professionals can carry out specific critical medical procedures at home with the help of supervised nurses who are certified and hold knowledge about technically advanced medical equipment. Healthcare at home allows your loved ones to get the personalized care that they need at their doorstep.
   
3. Dietary and nutrition support is a part of home healthcare. Patients who suffer from certain diseases and are discharged from the hospitals after treatments, often grow very weak as they lack nutrition. Their problems can worsen with ageing, illness, and injury. Healthcare at home may include dietary and nutritional counselling along with home-cooked meals that can prevent your loved ones from lack of nutrition.
4. Multiple medical prescriptions can turn to be confusing. Home healthcare experts can help your loved ones to consume the right medicines at the right time to control their medical conditions and prevent the intake of wrong drugs.
5. When home care is provided to patients with chronic health issues such as diabetes or pneumonia, clinical trials have turned out to be better with fewer complications according to researchers. Healthcare at home can result in better health outcomes. Moreover, home healthcare allows patients to get treated in a better manner as it provides one-on-one support for individuals. Such personalized and skilled care strengthens the bond between healthcare professionals and their clients.

What’s Driving this Change in Home Healthcare Services?

Companies focusing on providing home healthcare services rely on automation heavily as it allows to ensure that the technology used in the process remains invisible and will enable them to deliver the best care for the users. Due to this factor, more and more home healthcare providing companies are discovering the potential value of automation and optimization as they need to stay competitive in the field.
Automated appointment scheduling is one of the examples of automated processes that result in increased efficiency. Leading technologies like Artificial Intelligence can help healthcare businesses in providing better organized patient-centric services.

For instance, medicines and equipment required by the patients can be determined in real-time with technology. Along with this AI can allow the feature of predictive caregiver scheduling and appointment duration along with predictive routing for travel in case of emergencies. It can also improve customer service through predictive cancellation to avoid no-show appointment prevention.
The whole purpose of automation in home healthcare is to streamline the overall processes such as scheduling and providing services as and when needed, along with all the necessary equipment, thus, improving the patient care at an accelerating pace. This way, all the hassle of fixing random appointments can be eliminated while increasing the productivity of the overall system.
Recommended Read: Blockchain in Healthcare: Opportunities, Challenges, and Applications

The power of the latest ground-breaking technologies like Blockchain and AI can change a lot in the healthcare sector as by resolving current issues and helping patients to get the best experience when it comes to home healthcare. Healthcare organizations are getting aware of the benefits that technology can provide them such as finishing basic tasks and saving time.

5 Technologies Reforming Home-Healthcare

1. Sensors
According to Kalorama information, sales for remote patient monitoring was estimated to around $29.7 Billion in the year 2014 out of which a good part of the demand was accounted for home healthcare facilities and services. Eldercare providers have picked up interest in the home healthcare treatments rather than shifting people to another treatment facility.
As per the trend, sensor technology could be placed in home premises, around doors, windows as well as the patient’s appliances and equipment. These sensors can provide alerts to caregivers in case of any abnormal activity.
They can also track and send notifications if the patient misses their meals. This can be particularly important for patients dealing with diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Such patients can remain at home, and their activities can be monitored via mobile healthcare apps as well as sensors.
2. GPSIn cases of emergency, such as when senior citizens are away from home for a long time, GPS tracking can help their families, healthcare workers or law enforcement bodies to locate them quickly. Technologies with features such as mobile alert services also allow these devices to follow a hybrid approach that enables people to find the elderly even in places where GPS might not be available such as garage parking and indoors. It can also help by automated calling for assistance in case users fall.
Moreover, in need for emergency health services, there can be a difference of life and death concerning calling the closest emergency squad and rapid dispatching. GPS tracking becomes and much-needed option in emergency business service.
3. Remote Monitoring Tools
Regular health monitoring is not an option but a necessity when it comes to elderly patients. Many devices are available these days which can be connected to smartphones to help reduce the costs as well as the time that is consumed when it comes to doctor visits in endangered health situations.

Technology has enabled different options in the form of fitness bands that can keep a regular track of sleep, diet, number of steps, etc. Along with these, there are many other devices which can be used for the purpose of tracking and measuring glucose and blood pressure levels along with heart rate monitoring and other measurements. Such tools allow the patient’s family members as well as nurses and doctors to keep a detailed track of their daily healthcare needs and eliminate the need of calling a doctor time and again.
4. Big DataHome healthcare relies highly on the data available from multiple resources and its analysis to gain vital insights for the right kind of treatment. Some home health services analyze data in massive amounts and use their outcomes to take preventive measures even before a medical situation can turn into a problem.
Big-data enabled sensor can detect the regular activity levels such as sleep patterns etc. and inform the caretaking authorities to take immediate action concerning any abnormality.
5. TelehealthTelehealth systems are a boon to the healthcare industry as they provide people with the ability to use phones and other digital systems to connect patients with doctors and specialists. Moreover, the promising advances in these systems can help the disabled or elderly citizens from traveling to-and-fro to healthcare facilities. Devices such as smartphones and iPads with a simple internet connection can make it easier for the people to implement telehealth and make results easier to understand. They allow doctors to monitor patients from different places and share the outcomes in real time.

3 Applications Driving Healthcare Innovation

Constantly evolving mobile technology has led us to implement new and improved ideas to reality. Healthcare mobile apps are a big revolution in the industry as they have made our work more accessible and improved the rate of efficiency.
Following is a list of some of the healthcare applications that are rapidly transforming the healthcare industry for good.
1. Doctor-On-Demand:
Doctor-on-demand is a mobile application that allows the patient to get a consultation with their doctors through video calling. The application uses the concept of telemedicine to provide the patients with an on-demand doctor in situations of urgent care.

Certified physicians offer their services for urgent care, chronic conditions, preventive medicines, medical advice, etc for both medical care and mental health.
The app could also be helpful in non-emergency situations like flu and cold, respiratory issues, allergies, back pain, and UTI.
2. HealthTap:

The application allows a patient to fix a virtual medical appointment with a doctor or to get some answers to their questions. It provides a convenient way to access healthcare from real doctors for 24*7, through consultations via video, voice or text. The app also has a knowledge library of around 700,000 topics and articles for people to read and learn about healthcare on their own.
It uses an AI-powered symptom checker for one-to-one recommendations and guidance.
3. Microsoft HealthVault:
Microsoft HealthVault is a digital service as well as a mobile app that offers a patient the freedom to keep their medical records updated and safe. The patients can also share these records with digital professionals securely in the time of need. The system is exceptionally suitable for patients with chronic diseases as they can keep a proper track of their routine health metrics.

It also allows patients to set healthcare goals, track progress, and discover health trends.

Concluding View

Healthcare at home sure has a lot of potential but it can only be leveraged if the technologies are utilized in an effective manner.

Crucial data such as patient history should be managed properly and researched for insights and understanding without compromising its security.

People need to believe in technologies in order to adapt and use them in daily lives. Trending names like Blockchain and Artificial intelligence can bring a revolution in the healthcare industry with emerging use-cases and a proper understanding on how they can be used at their best for patients, doctors as well as the overall healthcare ecosystem.

The post How is Technology Transforming Healthcare at Home appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

Many find them similar but Digitization is the process of storing, converting, processing or transferring information in a format recognized by computers.
Whereas, Digitalization is the change in social, business and economic behavior on the adoption of new technology.
The essence of digitalization is the way consumers, businesses and the government adopt & incorporate technology to collaborate with systems, processes, people and the entire business community.

One of the best examples of digitalization is the Apple watch.

The Apple Watch is a perfect specimen to understand digitalization, it shows how a normal watch can be transformed into a watch with a phone, messaging and internet capabilities.
Another good example is the mobile numbers linked with Aadhar Card (Unique Identification Number for residents of India) which in turn is coupled with the financial account of consumers.
However, it is not only technology but the changing corporate scenario, business processes, and operating culture, that drives digital transformation to success.

The financial projects eyeing digital transformation are long-term, massive in scope and comes with risks too. Though many consider digital transformation a hype or the confusion, it does involve a sincere & serious change in business spectrum. Since the time digital transformation entered the finance domain, there have been many surveys and research to understand the importance or impact of the same. Digital transformation technology calls for an investment in hardware, software and sometimes even in products or services.
Gartner survey with financial executives from huge corporate establishments revealed that 62% feel digital transformation is a management initiative while remaining consider it as a part of optimization. Also, many companies are keen on investing in technology that can speed-up their businesses. In fact, companies opt for investing in digital transformation to differentiate from their competitors.

Impact of Digital Transformation on Finance

Digital disruption has heavily impacted a variety of habits and behaviors of the professional world. Technology combined with smartphones and the internet provides numerous benefits to the customers as well as to financial establishments. Previously the implications of digital transformation were unknown as people were concerned about the transition from manual to the digital world. However, the scenario has changed now. With tighter regulations and changing customer demands, the financial applications and systems have become nimbler and progressive.

For financial establishments, digitalization is more than just adopting technologies such as cloud, big data, social media or mobile. It is aimed more towards creating new business models to develop an eco-system where all markets & consumers could participate.
Thus, organizations focus more on capitalizing with new and emerging technologies that help them in positioning and transforming the teams into high performers.
Digital transformation enables digital tools to enhance productivity & efficiency and change of hard paper documents to secured PDF or HTML formats. The days with an application form and product sheets are gone. The sales team & field officers are now empowered with smartphones and other portable devices where information can easily be displayed. Many financial services providers have embraced digital transformation. However, many companies have taken hold up approach of observing the developments and then decide on investing in digitization.
Digital transformation comes with its share of risks, and hence a setback approach is a safer route.
Digitalization has positively impacted the economic growth and has accelerated the growth of innovations. Many are on for a debate that there is no economic growth, but the signs of potential positive impact are quite visible; the best examples are the mobile banking apps, mobile money, and e-wallets.

Enlisted here is the importance of digital transformation on financial sector:
1. High Standardization: Finance functions are always considered as high performing. When these are integrated with technology systems with standardized processes and data; leads to a high standardization.

2. Highly Automated functions: Adoption of new technology tools lead to higher process automation for services such as money remittance, procurement orders, invoice generation, and KYC verification.

3. Faster Performance: With the adoption of big-data and other machine learning tools in finance, it is easier to predict and forecast budget allowing teams to finish month-end cycles before time.

4. Insight-driven functions: Digitalization has modified financial models in such a way that the resources concentrate more on deriving insights rather than focusing only on transactions.
5. Improved customer and employee experience: The same level of information is available with customers and employees and thus less chaos in transactions.6. Better Service Delivery: The legacy systems integrated with new technologies have changed the finance’s operating model. The structured processes have improved service delivery.
Along with the high importance, the major priorities & challenges for financial services and banking establishments over the world that would impact their business includes strategies listed below:

1. Acting in line with the regulatory requirements
2. Reduced costs or improved margins for retail business operations
3. Improved customer segmentation
4. Enhancements in services, product designs, and promotional channels
5. Migration from physical or legacy channels to a digital platform
6. Integrating the legacy systems with new technology following all compliance and guidelines

Financial organizations now implement these strategies and they can digitally transform and automate their processes. The impact is such that there has been a drastic improvement in performing customer operations in a lesser time-frame. The automation has lead financial companies to meet regulatory deadlines, achieve operational and transactional risks and still stay competitive by investing in technology.
Digital transformation has assisted in automating monotonous tasks, management of compliance and accounting & operations functions which include accounts, reports & analysis. Digitalization also reduces the possibility of cyber risks and minimize errors that occur due to the execution of robust strategies.

Critics response to Digital Transformation

Despite the positive impact of digital transformation, critics believe this is a wonderful opportunity for tech vendors to restyle their services & products and sell them in the name of digital transformation.
Well, another critical point to note here is that none of the tech guys spend their working hours digitally transforming or innovating, but instead spend time in programming, coding, and development. However, critics do not realize that this coding, programming, and development is what makes a system perform in a particular manner. The technology drives these systems and hence the transformation.

Why digital transformation matters in finance?

Digital transformation may only seem to be a buzzword, but as they say, there is more to an iceberg than appears on the surface, there is definitely more to our story of digital transformation as well.
The concept of digitalization assists financial service executives in altering the already set rules, and the economic growth is quite visible. The customer-facing mobile apps are the best examples. The increasing number of people relying on the mobile and online banking applications, the financial and banking services are on a race towards digital transformation. The more convenient an application is for customers, the more is the digital transaction and financial growth.
For banks and credit card companies, providing a mobile customer experience with no downtime and faster transaction process is of higher importance. The other financial establishments such as capital markets, funds, and equity market utilize big data and automation tools for data analysis and high-performance computing to track milliseconds of transaction data.

A closer look at both the examples reveals that the business is capitalizing on technology to improve customer experience.
The primary aim of digital transformation in the financial sector is to be more customer-centric.
In financial services, competition is not just with other financial services providers but with anyone offering a real technology and consumer experience. The focus while digitizing financial services or while developing financial mobile applications should be to make the customer’s lives easier. Here, it is essential to make a point that digital transformation is not a technology strategy but a business strategy that makes business swift and quick to respond to the market.
Digitalization has unlocked newer opportunities in the banking, credit and capital market functions of the financial domain. There are multiple branch locations, and it is hard to keep a branch right next to the consumer; hence mobile apps that keep your office straight in your hands. Having said this, many financial institutions still rely on their legacy systems that run on IBM frames and are built on COBOL.
These systems, however, cannot be upgraded or updated as the developers too have moved to the newer technologies. It is a considerable challenge for some financial services companies to pull out the data and get on to the modern technology-based system. Other than the integration of the legacy system with advanced technology, the keenness to embrace digitalization by company workforce was also a challenge. But with the disruption in existing services and products, it is essential for companies to focus on acquiring new skills and technology.
The key to surviving in a digital environment is to adapt and adjust to the changes. CIOs take this responsibility to adopt the changes and lead the transformation. Though the right technology will outgrowth the efficiency, it is the workforce that ensures successful implementation.

Digital tools meant to support financial functions

The digital tools meant for financial services industry focus more on improving and updating the existing competencies and core systems. There are other exponential tools too that are intended to deliver new capabilities.
The growing technologies disrupting the financial system includes:
Cloud
The benefit of adopting cloud in finance is unquestionable. Cloud brings further acceleration and swiftness. Cloud technology in financial services expedites new digital workflows enabling effective interdepartmental collaboration or collaboration between business and third parties. The financial institutions use SaaS-Based cloud applications for business processes such as HR and accounting. As the workforce and the team heads get comfortable with the application, it gets integrated with the core systems.Financial services/solutions find security & compliance as crucial problems.

However, with cloud-enabled applications, it is easy to scale data for critical functions such as credit scoring, consumer payments, statements and billings for essential account functions. Also, data speed is vital for financial firms to stay competitive and in effect. Financial services industry is the primary target for cyber criminals, owing to sensitive personal information. The quickness of cloud safeguards the critical data, digital financial assets, and user information while protecting the employee performance.
Robotic Process Automation
One of the hottest entry in the financial services vertical is the robotic process automation. Financial establishments work on multiple technology systems and process robotics assist in automating transaction processing and communication across various systems.

Process robotics address the key challenges of the financial sector and can be effectively utilized for:

• Billing and collections operations & accounts receivable functions
• Journal entry, allocations & adjustments, inter-company transactions
• Reporting-financial as well as external
• Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting
• Treasury processes

Process robotics will enhance the functionalities of legacy systems by lessening inefficiency and addressing the manual intensive activities. Although Process Robotics is at a testing state at a few organizations but is working exceptionally well to support legacy systems.
Data Visualization
When it comes to communicating across multiple departments within the financial organization, data visualization is the key to attain insight. Business executives have an enormous amount of data but communicating in regards to same was an issue.

However, with data visualization, one can easily track and predict organizational performance. The financial sector is considered as the data hub. With data visualization, the analysts can explain complex data, trace intersections of information and present details based on this analysis that helps in forecasting organizational performance.
It is estimated that more than 65% of people are visual learners. Data visualization technique provides decision makers with detailed visual data illustrations so that they can understand the analytics through visuals and make informed decisions.
Data visualization can also help the financial sector in identifying new and additional trends for interactive features and more profound insights. In fact, data visualization is used by the financial leaders to track KPIs- financial and non-financial both. Also, these financial leaders improve team performance by correlating the KPI metrics and data analysis.
Advanced Analytics
Today, there are several different channels through which the customers interact with their financial services provider. Because of the multiple channels, there is a load of customer data being collected by financial organizations. This data can be effectively leveraged using Artificial Intelligence or advanced or predictive analytics to gain insight into consumer behavior. Advance/predictive analytics can assist financial establishments to optimize their processes thereby reducing costs.
Predictive Analytics
Predictive Analysis is best used in applications such as Fraud Detection. The dashboard of predictive analytics reports prompts and provides notification on anomalies in transaction data. Other than detecting the anomalies, the advanced analytics software can assist in collecting, cleaning and analyzing raw data. The analytics also assist in identifying customer trends by predicting marketing efforts and analyzing customer past and present online behavior using machine learning algorithms.
Advanced Analytics improves a variety of finance functions and assists financial leaders in achieving insights such as:

• Improving supply chains
• Revenue Forecasting
• Identifying the trouble spots
• Fraud detection

The combination of human judgment with automation and advanced analytics provides an ethical oversight to the business.
Cognitive Computing
Cognitive computing is yet another constant disruption in finance. It is the technology that makes use of natural language processing, machine learning, speech recognition, and computer vision to stimulate human thinking. For financial organizations, it is essential to collect, analyze and use data to improve decision making. 

Some of the basic elements of cognitive computing are:

• It enables financial organizations to obtain personalized information about the customers and use the same to notify about payments, bills, and other reminders. Cognitive computing also offers suggestions regarding exceeding customer payments and other intelligent automation services.
• The cognitive computing also ensures the creation of conversation interfaces for placing customer queries and responding to them. Chat-bots are the best example of AI-powered digital assistants, developed to respond to customer queries thereby improving consumer services and CRM.
• Robo-advisors too are a part of cognitive computing but are not AI-powered. The Robo-advisors use algorithms to read through data and come up with a suitable suggestion.
• Cognitive technology works similar to human thinking but is considered as key to security. Protection of financial data is vital; hence cognitive computing is the solution.
• With complex laws and regulations within the financial sector, poor knowledge of data policies can make finances a challenge for customers. With cognitive computing, real-time updates on rules and real-time implementation of the policies help in keeping policy documents updated and encourage good compliance.
• Cognitive computing has enabled real-time trading analysis and improved trading systems so that customers can be served faster and better.

Cognitive computing has been beneficial for both the company and customers. Apps enabled with algorithms, machine learning, digital advisors and improvement in cyber security have positively impacted customers to manage their finances.
In-memory Computing
With financial companies dealing an enormous amount of data, higher transaction volumes and increasing compliance; there arises a need to address real-time data analysis challenge. If it is finance, it has to be high performing, but with enormous data load, the efficiency can be at stake.
The massive amount of trading and accounting data calls for a robust infrastructure, with high speed of transactions and in real-time. In-memory computing platform addresses these challenges. The information is stored in the main random access memory of specialized servers. This means that it eliminates the delay while retrieving data from servers.
The 24-hour mobile banking pile up huge data and at the same time the regulations, exchange rates, interest rates, share prices, etc. are also required to be updated. The in-memory computing platform offer users with real-time information and calculation. It also provides information around commodity trading in real-time at an excellent speed for the users to experience a never before financial experience.
BlockchainOne of the most trending digital tool these days is Blockchain. With the advent of Blockchain technology, the financial services industry is considered to have entered into a new digital era. This new technology has changed the way we think about transactions and has revolutionized the economy. Blockchain technology stands out of all the technologies that have disrupted the finance vertical.
Blockchain powers decentralized digital currency also called as cryptocurrency.
Recommended Read: How is BlockChain Revolutionizing Finance  
In Blockchain technology, encrypted blocks of data are considered as currency and are shared during transactions. Blockchain technology makes use of advanced encryption techniques to verify currency and transaction. Blockchain technology ensures that only the authorized users who own the part of Blockchain can edit the data using the private key.
Smart Contract is one of the most attractive applications of Blockchain technology. It automates the execution of commercial agreements and transactions. As Blockchain technology entertain no middlemen, smart contracts are considered more secure than the traditional agreements that adds up cost for the middlemen. It is also believed that the Blockchain technology will assist in fraud reduction, enable one time KYC process, efficient & cost effective trading, and many more.
The technology may sound a promising one, but still many challenges need to be addressed to transform the finance and banking sector with Blockchain technology completely.

Concluding View

It is just a matter of time before we see the described technologies disrupting the financial sector. With consumers becoming smarter and more demanding,

It is essential for commercial establishments to undergo digital transformation to appeal, capture and maintain the attention of consumers.

The post Digital Transformation in Finance appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

As Mr. White used to say – “I am the one who knocks”.
This new explosion in IT is definitely the one that is knocking on every VCs and investors doorstep. This could be precisely said because the overall investment in Financial Technology has already surpassed the 2017 results in mid-year itself.
Let’s take a look at some of the major breakthroughs that occurred in FinTech this year,
• The acquisition of WorldPay
WorldPay (now WorldPay, Inc) was publicly listed payment processing platform which provided online services for accepting electronic transactions by a variety of methods such as credit card, bank based or direct transfer. It also offered a range of merchant services and operated in an extensive demographic (400,000 merchants in 146 countries) across the globe. It was acquired by Vantiv, a leading provider of payment processing services and related technology solutions for financial institutions. The $12.9 billion acquisition came as a significant step forward for the two giants.
WorldPay which competes with the likes of VeriFone, PayPal, Stripe and several others gained significant momentum after the acquisition.
• The Funding of Ant Financial
It didn’t come as a surprise to many when China’s Ant Financial raised about $14 billion in its last seed round. After all, it is backed by one of the biggest names in the industry (Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.).

The funding made Ant the world’s leading FinTech firm. The funding undeniably equipped them with enormous resources for expansion. The affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is alreadyChina’s biggest online payments service and even controls the world’s largest money market fund.
“Now, with the help of our partners, we are going to accelerate our strategy,” Ant’s CEO Eric Jing said in a statement to Bloomberg.

Recommended Read: Top 10 FinTech Companies Transforming Finance in USA

Analyzing the above developments we could accurately predict where FinTech is headed in 2020.
Let’s take a sneak peek,

Fintech Trends in 2020

1. RegTech is here to stay

Compliance, Complexity, Cost and Bureaucratic processes have always stifled the development of the finance industry. The long and tedious processes have proven to be a bane for the industry. This led to the reincarnation of a morbid industry that never saw a significant thrust since the spurt of the dot-com bubble. Consequently, we are seeing a lot of financial firms shifting to Regulatory Technology (RegTech) to bridge those gaps.
One must wonder- What exactly is RegTech??

It is essentially the use of technology across financial services functions to ease financial tasks such as regulatory compliance. It has a significant impact on financial services.
In simpler words, it is a technology that helps financial service firms get better at dealing with regulation. For instance, Know Your Customer (KYC). But the benefits of RegTech far exceeds than just KYC.
As the world is moving from big data to ‘smart data’, technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning are enabling companies to gain insights into regulatory practices, automate reporting, carry out a meaningful inspection of critical compliance risk areas and even potentially create an end-to-end view of compliance.
Companies are using RegTech to deal with the vast amount of data they are generating. More data handled the right way also means better information. Many VCs and investors have already started riding on the RegTech bandwagon, due to which there has been a significant increase in the investment across this lucrative sector.
There has been an investment of $1.37 billion in the first half of 2018 – more than for all of 2017. RegTech has a promising future ahead, and these new-age startups will be the ones to watch out for in the upcoming calendar.

1. Governance.io / governance.com:Based out of Luxembourg, and founded by brothers Bert and Rob Boerman, this RegTech startup provides smart technology and support services to facilitate the control of regulated companies. They raised their Series A round this year, Governance.io has established itself as a platform for good governance through the use of technology and support.
Deployed at-premise or in the cloud, the solution allows all stakeholders to collaborate on data, documentation, and workflows. It also provides a white-labeled client portal to exchange data and collaborate on meetings and due diligence questionnaires.
A network of governance supports clients that can provide hosting, operational support, regulatory advisory, and other support services.

2. Advanced logic analytics:
This UK based startup was founded in 2015. Riding on new age technologies, ALA has established a stronghold in the Compliance sector. It offers enterprise-wide big data and financial analytics solutions for buy and sell-side institutions and other financial firms. Their data science-led business offering and AI driven algorithms bring alternative data insights for financial institutions. By using machine learning-based analytic techniques, ALA develops and apply risk calculations. Communications and other source data are scored against a series of Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) to quickly pick up on any issues that could cause problems.

3. Agreement express:
Agreement Express provides onboarding automation software for financial services. Their platform allows wealth management and payments companies to deliver customer application, approval, and onboarding services across their offerings. They provide seamless integration to the back-office for compliance and risk workflows which is one of their most sought-after features.
4. Alyne:
The differentiating factor for this Munich based startup has been the market it caters. Alyne offerings include cybersecurity, risk management and compliance capabilities across all industries of all magnitudes. They call themselves “Business focused Software as a Service”.
5. Surety:
Surety caters to a niche segment of Regulatory Technology. They provide technology to protect the integrity of digital information using cryptographic time-stamping service. They are also one of the prominent providers of regulatory services such as IP protection and digital footprint preservation. Surety sanctions users to apply tamper-proof digital “Seals” to almost any form of electronic information. They are easily deployable across enterprise or cloud, providing long-term and independent proof with the guarantee that the information hasn’t been tampered since.
6. AppZen:
Appzen is an extremely impressive AI platform that utilizes machine learning to audit contracts, expense reports, and invoices. It integrates with all major ERPs, invoicing software, and expense automation products. This six-year-old startup is valued at $175 million and has recently raised $35 million in its Series B round. Appzen enjoys clientele such as Airbnb, Amazon, Citi Bank, Salesforce, Intuit, and 650 major organizations.
“The goal is to address all the domains in the CFO organization,” AppZen’s Chief Executive Officer, Anant Kale said in a statement.
7. AQMETRICS: 
AQMETRICS provides GRC (Governance, Risk & Compliance) software for financial services firms trading on the global financial markets. Headquartered in Kildare, Ireland (EU), AQMETRICS has raised almost $3.3 Million in investment so far. They specialize in providing unified market surveillance and compliance solutions to investment management companies. AQMETRICS serves a suite of cloud-based solutions and supports a full range of global regulatory reporting.

8. Arachnys:
Arachnys’ vision is focused on exploiting the evolving markets rather than already lucrative ones because they believe emerging markets, which are often fragmented and poorly organized will see an explosion of business information. Unlike their RegTech counterparts, Arachnys, therefore, targets the Eurasian market more extensively. Their primary emphasis remains attractive markets like China, India, Russia, and the Middle East.
Arachnys domain expertise caters to Customer Risk Evaluation lifecycle by using cutting-edge technologies such as Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning, Intelligence, and Natural Language Processing.
Their products are specifically tailored to serve a diverse customer base and are extensively customizable.

2. Artificial Intelligence:

In the early days of banking, bankers used to have personal connections with their customers. Each step of the banking process involved customer-client interaction. But due to the digitization of the banking process, this personal connection has been lost. So, is it possible to leverage the same technology to get that human interaction back?

Many believe, A.I can be leveraged to bring back that connection.
Artificial intelligence (A.I.) will continue to govern FinTech in new ways. In 2020, we could see companies use A.I. to develop new commerce interfaces, with the number of companies looking into voice set to increase.
Let’s delve into the potential use-cases of A.I:

• Credit Scores:
In traditional banking infrastructure, there were a lot of customers who were underserved and ignored. They couldn’t apply for a loan because they didn’t have a credit score. Many startups have stepped up to bridge that crevice.
Various applications are coming up to assist customers who want to apply for a loan but have no credit history for the bank to review. Many tools and technologies such as Psychometric Analysis, Behavioral Detection, Predictive Analysis, and mining of the borrower’s data through the web, social media, geo-location and even browser history are being deployed to ensure a detailed evaluation of the potential borrower. These technologies let banks build a vivid picture that allows them to evaluate whether a candidate is creditworthy.
• Security and Fraud Control:
The banking sector is the single most targeted area by hackers and fraudsters for obvious reasons. This anomaly allows for the development of some of the most innovative and hi-tech solutions in this realm. Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Optimized Algorithms, and numerous other tools and technologies are being deployed by financial firms and new-age startups to address this issue. Many A.I tools have also come into use to analyze and observe user’s critical behavioral patterns and issue warnings in case of possible security infringement. Due to these developments, it was observed in the Q3 that consumers are increasingly becoming more at ease at using A.I-driven applications and digital payment gateways to carry out their financial transactions.
• Customer Support Automation:
Time and again it has been witnessed that most of the customer-facing processes are becoming obsolete by every passing day. They are being revolutionized by the advent of Chabots and Virtual Assistants. It could be easily figured out as to what exactly is driving that trend. Automation of customer-facing services address one problem that has always costed companies in billions of dollar – Human Error.

AI-driven platforms utilizing Natural Language Processing (NLP) are turning more human than ever. This combined with no possible error in delivery makes it an ideal fit. Chatbots can not only answer customer queries intelligently, but they can also be integrated with social networking sites, and accept requests for applications and orders directly from social media channels.

Gartner prediction for 2018, projected more than 2 billion people would be diligently using conversational A.I to interact with virtual assistants on different platforms. The outcomes clearly surpassed the forecasts.

Recommended Read: 7 Tips for Starting a Fintech Company

3. Blockchain will venture beyond Bitcoin:

The much-hyped technology upon which Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are based – The Blockchain, is all set out to venture beyond Bitcoin and will serve various other markets and domains. Keeping in mind the potential of Blockchain, several banks and financial firms have planned for considerable investments in the domain. Many companies have rolled out pilot programs across a range of industries, including – financial services, healthcare and even global logistics. Earlier in 2018, several banks in Asia conducted a pilot in which Blockchain was used to transfer funds across continents in a matter of few seconds.

The following could be the potential use cases that can come into light in 2020,
1. Weapons Tracking:Blockchain could help tremendously in gun control and weapon accountability. This could easily be one of the single most significant reform that could change the entire state of firearm distribution. And gun control being such a trending topic on almost every new network. Blockchain could create a completely transparent and never-changing registry ledger that allows law enforcement to track down weapons and guns ownership. It could also be utilized to keep a record of weapons sold privately.

2. Digital Voting:If you are worried about booth capturing or voter fraud. Then Blockchain will offer you a sigh of relief. Blockchain would offer the ability to vote digitally and at the same time be transparent enough that any regulator could see if any irregularity or fraud transpires. The decentralized nature and its immutability would ensure your vote truly counts.

3. Digital IDs:
Digital IDs with the help of Blockchain would be a boon for the impoverished and developing nations by giving them access to financial services. Tech giant Microsoft is already planning to venture into the domain by creating digital IDs within its Authenticator app.
4. Real Estate:
Since paper trails are frequently a source of confusion, it is entirely possible that Blockchain will take paper out of the equation. So, if one plans to buy or sell land, a house, or even a car you’ll just require to transfer the title. Thanks to Blockchain these titles will get stored on the network allowing for a crystal clear picture of the legal ownership.
5. Record keeping of medical records:
Patient privacy would be utterly discreet by the introduction of Blockchain in the pharmaceutical sector. The patients who possess the key to access these records will be in complete ownership of their data and will control who can access or view that data. Thus strengthening the HIPAA laws that are designed to protect their privacy.
6. Managing IoT (Internet of Things) networks:
Many networking corporations have announced that they are working on a Blockchain based application that will monitor the Internet of Things network. Such an application would help determine the authenticity of the devices on the network and would continuously do so for devices entering and leaving the network. This could drive a significant shift in device-to-device integration.
Recommended Read: How is BlockChain Revolutionizing Banking and Financial Markets

4. Financial Inclusion:

In the largest ever gathering of FinTech firms in Singapore, Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi introduced attractive policies and plans to invite investors to the Indian landscape.
“I say this to all the FinTech companies and startups: India is your best destination,” said Modi, the keynote speaker at the Singapore FinTech Festival.
In Nigeria, FinTech startup NetPlus has come with a solution that provides simple and reliant digital payment system to the consumers. So, consumers of Nigeria who were generally skeptical when it comes to e-commerce, have embraced the platform.
Developments such as these are proving to be an excellent boost for evolving markets such as India, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, and several others. Earlier when the FinTech hubs used to be just San Francisco, Singapore, and London, such developments are driving investors to these huge rewarding markets. This shift in the market will gain significant traction next year and developing nations would possible see tremendous growth in investments across FinTech and RegTech. Also, several financial establishments are planning to open up new premises in these countries which definitely suggests what is expected to come our way in 2020.

Wrapping up

My prediction for 2020:

It is big, It is growing, and It is disruptive.

FinTech would be the second-most significant transformation in Finance, since the first permanent banknotes. I believe, Financial Technology would not only disrupt the way we purchase and invest, but it would also alter the very definition of money itself.
FinTech 3.0 is upon us and banks, and financial firms will enjoy a roller-coaster ride riding on the FinTech wagon.  2020 will be the year of banks acquiring FinTech firms, or waiting for their slow demise. Those who catch the FinTech train would bolster, and the rest would be gasping for air.
After all, it is true what they say – You snooze, You lose.
EngineerBabuteam excels in creating fintech products utilizing the latest tech stacks. This is why so many of our clients have gone on to acquire record funding from renowned investors. One such dear customer of ours, BankOpen, a neobanking platform, recently raised $5M in Series A led by Beenext, Speedinvest, and 3one4 Capital. We possess solid domain expertise in developing FinTech products. Feel free to reach out to us for a free consultation.
What do you think of this article? Feel free to drop your comments in case you have any suggestions or queries. We’ll get back to you with 24 to 48 hours. 

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The post AI & Blockchain in Banking or FinTech appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

Why you need a FinTech Company for your business?

Online platforms in financial technology can be driving force for the growth of businesses by leaps and bounds. For instance, FinTechs can help credit unions and banks build a thriving B2B business without any hassles. It can majorly contribute by enhancing efficiency, reducing costs and downtime.  This, in turn, can be directly proportional to increased productivity and better utilization of available resources.
Evaluating the pros and cons can help you make the right choice according to your requirements. The key to choosing the right partner for your business will revolve around measuring certain compliance, risk tolerance, and customer service factors. In short, your FinTech partners should operate under the same high standards so that they can manage your processes without tainting your reputation. Here are a few things you need to know as to why you FinTech partner is indispensable for your business:

•    Minimized risk and maximized positive impact:

First and the foremost factor which you need to consider is an easy identification of what is missing from your current offerings to the customers. It is quite possible that your customers aren’t really looking for a new service or solution. All they yearn for is a better and efficient access to products they already have.  Hence, finding the right partner will help you improve your streamlined processes and existing product line. This, in turn, can significantly impact your approval time and underwriting positively. In this way, the needs of your customers will be fulfilled and result in lowering of your risks.

•    Increased transparency:

Ensure that you choose a FinTech partner who is completely transparent in their offering. Advertisements can often be misleading when very few loans qualify at that rate. Make sure that your lending platform partners are willing to share their actual APR range of loans. Always remember that your customers expect you to be very responsible for the service the partner provides. Thus, never compromise on these intricate details otherwise you might stake your reputation for no positive results.

•    Demand built-in compliance:

With an increase in compliance costs, you should seek FinTech partners which already possess built-compliance technology which can help you mitigate the risks and improve your savings. You can choose those partners which are working under the same banking standards as you, with a regulated protocol and uniform processes. Their ultimate goal should be to help small businesses grow exponentially without ruining their credibility in the market. Built-in compliance technology can thus play an instrumental role in driving down the overhead costs.

Hence, choosing the right FinTech partner can turn out to be a blessing in disguise. You need to stand out in the crowd in the competitive market by improving your efficiency, delivering speed and providing low-cost loans. Technological advancements in the finance sector can help banks accelerate their working processes. But, you need to be cautious as not all FinTech companies will share the same principles, standards, and goals as you. Thus, study the market trends properly before you step out in the market to choose your right FinTech partner.

Top 10 Reputable FinTech Companies For Your Business:

1.  Stripe: 

Valued at a whopping $9.2 billion, this fintech pioneer ‘s mission is to transform the workings of internet business. Founded in the year 2010 by Irish brothers, Patrick and John Collison, Stripe has achieved indefeasible feats by supporting online transactions for various bigwigs like Uber, Google, Spotify and more. Its ultimate goal is to ease out the process of secure and fast payments. It provides APIs to clients so that integration of online payment systems with their websites and apps can be smooth. Apart from that, it aims at building flexible and powerful tools for internet commerce.
Stripe’s unmatched functionality and meticulously designed APIs help create the best possible products for users. Undoubtedly, it is a one-stop destination for the creation of subscription services, crowdfunding platforms, an e-commerce store and more. This technology company builds economic infrastructure for the internet by helping out businesses of every size. It combines a payment platform with applications that put revenue data at the heart of business operations. Millions of world’s innovative technology companies are scaling efficiently by building their businesses on Stripe. No wonder, Stripe has occupied the top positions in the Top 10 list of FinTech Companies.
2.  Sofi:

Sofi has made a mark in the FinTech industry by helping people achieve financial independence. It follows a unique approach to offering lower interest rates and lending to encourage big savings. Sofi has brought the necessary disruption in the US personal banking sector, by putting the consumer first. With student loans mounting up and credit scores going down, acquiring money from a bank became a tedious task at hand.
It established itself in the market by targeting student loan refinancing for Standford MBAs. But, with time, it moved forward with providing personal loans, mortgages and wealth management. Currently valued at $4.3 Billion, the company has grown exponentially in a short span of time. Founded in 2011 by Mike Cagney, Dan Macklin, James Finnigan, and Ian Brady, the company has explored various economical alternatives for students depending on loans to finance their education.
3.  GreenSky:

David Zalik, a child prodigy who began attending college at 14, founded GreenSky in 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia. GreenSky stands tall in the market among other FinTech companies as it specializes in consumer finance marketplace. Their areas of expertise include Retail and Home Improvement. They have built their customer base in over 50 states of USA. They strive to transform small businesses and consumer credit mechanism by enabling pervasive and affordable access to financing.
GreenSky has funded over 12 billion loans and worked with more than 1.7 million customers. Apart from that, it is in collaboration with over 14 large banking institutions which aim at granting loans to customers through an easily accessible mobile app. GreenSky also financially supports medical procedures that may not be included in insurance such as cosmetic surgeries, dental assistance, visionary care, pet medical services and more. It has emerged to be a sought-after alternative for credit cards. In this internet driven era, where people are used to getting everything done with a single click, the instant lending option by GreenSky is changing lives for the better.
4.   Credit Karma:

Founded in the year 2007 by Kenneth Lin, Nichole Mustard, and Ryan Graciano, this company has proved to be an emerging player in the Financial sector. Its ultimate aim is to provide free access to credit scores and reports to its reliable customers. Also, you can viably make informed financial decisions by seeking the advice of their experts. Credit Karma holds great years of experience in providing financial management and free credit services.
Some other areas of its expertise include monitoring unclaimed property databases, free tax preparation and recognizing and disrupting credit report errors. It receives most of its revenue from targeted advertisements. It generates customers’ credit scores and reports from Transunion and Equifax with weekly updates. This customer credit data is then analyzed by the company in order to recommend financial products to the users. Any purchases of the financial products bought through Credit Karma recommendations generate revenues for them in terms of commissions paid by the banks. Also, its massive social media campaigns have helped it to gain recognition all over the world. In 2015, it began its MyMoneyStory online campaign encouraging people to talk about personal financial problems and issues openly and share stories of their financial woes, a rarely discussed topic in American society. No wonder that it has occupied the top charts in the Top 10 list of FinTech Companies.
5.  Oscar:

Founded in 2012 in New York City, Oscar strives to use technology to humanize health care. Its founders namely Mario Schlosser, Josh Kushner and Kevin Nazemi aimed at establishing health insurance company centered around the patient, engaging members and guiding them to the right care. In an attempt to make healthcare simple, smart and user- friendly, Oscar has hidden all the complexities of the process behind a simple and accessible user interface. It offers all its members free 24/7 telemedicine visits through their Doctor-on-Call Service.
A Concierge Team, comprising of three care guides and a registered nurse capable of handling everything from customer support questions to clinical coordination, is assigned to each of its members. It provides direct appointment scheduling and a clinical dashboard bringing all of the patient’s medical histories on a single platform. Today, Oscar drives the highest levels of engagement in health care, helping over 250,000 individuals and businesses from startups in Brooklyn, New York to bookkeepers in Bouldin Creek, Austin – take charge of their health.
6.  Avant :

Founded in 2012 by Al Goldstein, John Sun and Paul Zhang, it started with the aim of lowering the barriers and costs of borrowing. This Chicago based online money lending company strives to make the process of loan transaction smooth and user-friendly. Its founders Sun and Zhang graduated from the Y Combinator startup program in 2012 and wanted to build their business, Debteye. The application process for the business loan was tedious and, lead to frustration and desolation for them both. They decided to start Avant with the aim of making loan processes easier for other people.
Avant uses custom technology and analyzes customer data to provide personal lending and credit scoring options. While most of the lenders look at the financial history of the customers, Avant focuses on what they can achieve in the future. They study the behavioral and emotional patterns of the customers and not just their financial reports in order to provide them tailor-made lending options.
7.  Zenefits:

Zenefits is a promising American company which was founded by Park Conrad in 2013. It aims at providing cloud-based HR software as a service to its clients. Multiple HR services such as health insurance, payroll compliance, paid leaves, stock management options are taken care of by Zenefits. It follows a hub-and-spoke model for generating revenue. The cloud-based software service(hub) is provided to the customers for free thereby making it easier for the business to import all the employee information in Zenefits. It makes money through the spokes such as Health Insurance and Payroll by acting as a middleman between the companies providing those services and its clients. Therefore, it generates revenues in the form of commission. Zenefits has helped small startups tremendously by automating HR processes for them. Its network is spread in Tempe, Chicago, Atlanta, and Vancouver. Its goal is to bring technological disruption in an industry where usage of dot-matrix printers and fax machines is preferred.
8. Prosper:

Prosper was founded in 2005 as the first peer-to-peer lending marketplace in the United States. Since then, Prosper has facilitated more than $13 billion in loans to more than 850,000 people. It is an online platform which encourages people to invest in a way that is financially and socially rewarding. Borrowers can apply online for a fixed-rate, fixed-term loan between $2,000 and $40,000. Individuals and institutions can invest in loans and earn attractive returns. Prosper handles all loan servicing on behalf of the investors and matched borrowers. Prosper Marketplace is backed by leading investors including Francisco Partners, Sequoia Capital, Institutional Venture Partners and Credit Suisse NEXT Fund.
Founded by Chris Larsen and John Witchell, it maintains a full public database of all loans issued through its marketplace on its website. This database and all market statistics can be accessed and evaluated for analysis of loan performance over time. It follows a transaction-based business model, charging customers a nominal fee for each transaction. It verifies the borrower’s identity before processing loans and manages every stage of the process.  For the first three years of its existence, it followed a variable rate model functioning as an E-bay like online auction marketplace. In 2010, it filed a new prospectus at the SEC, altering its business model to use only pre-set rates determined exclusively by a prosper formula. Instead of auctioning for rates in an unmoderated and sometimes unfair auction process, lenders have to just make a simple choice now. They can invest at the rate assigned to the loan by Prosper’s loan pricing algorithm or not invest at all.
9. AvidXchange:

This American FinTech company provides automated payment solutions and account payable options to medium-sized businesses. AvidExchange was founded in 2000 by Micheal Preager. Catering mainly to real estate, financial services, energy, and construction sectors, it aims to make the process paperless and hassle-free. It provides electronic invoice capture, invoice approval workflow, invoice and bill payment reporting, utility bill analytics and payment solutions, centralized invoicing processing, account payable solutions and accounting system integration software solutions. It eliminates the outdated manual processed that lead to fraud, delay in payments and painful audits. Comprised of a family of 800 employees, AvidExchange witnessed a 3-year growth of 285% in the year 2017.
AvidXchange strives to give you the power to reduce processing costs, accelerate approvals and eliminate paper with more transparency into, and control over, spending than what you have ever had. AvidXchange gives you the power to automate manual tasks and spend your time doing more valuable tasks. Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) automation is all about eliminating manual processes and becoming more effective and efficient.P2P Automation streamlines the entire process from purchasing all the way through payment for enhanced reporting, optimal spending and better budgeting for your entire organization. Their leadership team is comprised of a representative from every functional area of our business. Their experts aim at creating strategies that can help your business grow manifold.
10.  Robinhood:

Robinhood is a mobile-application based service allowing an individual to invest in publicly traded companies and exchange-traded funds listed on U.S. stock exchanges without paying a commission. The billion-dollar enterprise was founded by Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt. In order to keep the fees down, the company has no storefronts and provides no additional tools. Aptly named after the popular fictional character, it is helping the less economically privileged grow by using and betting on rich people’s money. The fintech app has eliminated all brokerage fees that have traditionally been associated with initiating a buy or sell. It earns money through its Robinhood Gold accounts for premium members and by collecting interest from cash holdings and stocks just like a bank. The app is simple and clutter-free making it easy to use for everyone. Robinhood’s platform has fed directly in the application that links out to some popular free resources such as MarketWatch and Seeking Alpha, providing you all the necessary information you need about the market.

Conclusion

We can expect Fintech start-ups to engage with the established industry contenders and focus more on the customer experience and services in the digital era. In the long run, Fintech will have to invest more in innovation techniques, risk management, and partnerships through collaboration. This will be of great aid to both the banking sector and Fintech companies. It also needs to innovate its business models and find their place in the B2B sector. Furthermore, Smartphone would prove to be an important distribution medium for engaging with customers in the future.
Also, traditional financial contenders can explore the growth opportunities through new monetization models. And banks will have the benefits from the financial technology company ’s knowledge to develop the insights about the needs of their customers. Interpersonal relationships, on-demand, and smooth transactions are what new age customers are looking for. Therefore, the opportunity is huge for Fintechs to add value by employing big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning to the financial services.
Fintech is constantly developing and maturing and many fundamental tasks still need to be explored. NIFA is willing to work together with every country to strengthen communication and cooperation, to learn from each other, and to jointly promote fintech worldwide. With fintech firms, central banking is not an issue as lenders and borrowers are matched with each other to make a more stable credit exchange. It has the potential to completely change the way banking functions. FinTech is taking the age-old method of borrowing and lending without the existence of separate institutions and is challenging the territorial habits of traditional insurance and banking services.

The post Top 10 Fintech Companies Transforming Finance in USA appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

Is Conventional Banking at stake?

There have been some early adopters of this technology already like Santander Bank, who has found more than 25 use cases of blockchain in their banking platform. Banking industry works on the trust and loyalty of general public in them and therefore they have to use technologies which are thoroughly tested and have zero failure rate because if the transactions or other banking processes run over erroneous systems then banks can’t be trusted by anyone.
This is the main reason that banks have been unchanged for so long and are resistant to change their technology stack when it comes to the adaption of new technology.
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But this time it is not a question of whether they should move to blockchain or not but when they should shift to the blockchain. This is because, when you look at the promises and applications of blockchain in the banking sector, it is certain they don’t have a choice. They have to shift to blockchain if they want to survive this century. Let me tell you why this is the case, But first, understand what banks currently use to serve their customers.

Blockchain to Daily Banking Solutions

Banks today are generally run over digital platform based on Java or any other such languages. They have an interface for their employees and an access control system throughout the organization which defines what an employee can or cannot do. So, for example, a cashier can deduct the amount from the system or increase the amount on the basis of a request of the respective account holder. But there is a major loophole in this system which is the cashier itself.
Think about this situation where the bank cashier went rogue due to some reasons and decided to deduct a certain amount from any customer’s account. Of course, there is a human-based check on the cashier whether he or she has done some illegal transaction or not but this is only done after the cashier has done some illegal transaction. The system, the technology itself is not able to do anything to stop or put a check over such actions.
Here come the features of Blockchain to rescue. If such transaction had been done on a platform based on the blockchain, then this would have been stopped on the basis of consensus of the nodes involved and the cashier would have been identified without even conducting an inquiry. This is possible because of a decentralized and trustless system.
Decentralized means no individual owns or runs it. Nobody has complete ownership over everyone else, instead, everyone plays a role in making a decision for the complete system. Each individual has equal voting rights whether to take an action or not and any individual, part of the blockchain, can suggest a process and all the people can vote whether to accept it or not.
This makes it a perfect system for the banks where people can actually own their money rather than giving it to a central authority which makes all the decisions and all the people who are actually running the bank have no say in it.
Secondly, blockchain provides a trustless system for managing assets and property. What this means is, you don’t have to trust anyone else to make sure that your transaction is verified or not. All you have to do is perform a transaction of your assets or property and blockchain based platform will itself make sure that it is valid and will also notify you if some invalid transaction has occurred from or to your account.
Picking up the former cashier example, these two features will render any fraud transaction invalid and will stop any harm to the account of the victim.
This will render the costs of inquiry and hiring human based checks in the system to null and will help in setting up a transparent system in the society for property management. There has never been such a revolutionary system in existence in human history and that is why people in the sector are excited and spooked over this.
Another way blockchain helps is that it is inherently open in nature. What this means is you don’t have to ask anyone or take permission from anyone to become a part of the network. If you have a machine or computing resources then you can easily become a node and contribute to running the network.
This makes the use of blockchain even more necessary because it is above the concepts of discrimination and bias. It treats all the nodes same and only on the basis of their proof of work or proof of stake, it takes the actions. No other node or centralized actor has the power to take and implement decisions over you or your assets.

Conclusion

In the current scenario, if you have to open an account in a bank, you have to go through a tedious process of norms and regulations. Also, you have to put your faith in the bank that they will protect your life savings and do the right thing with them. But this system is inherently wrong from its nature. Banks don’t need to hold all this information about the account holder and in the same way, the account holder does not have to put faith in the bank. It is your money. You should own it. This is what blockchain offers. If a banking system is running on blockchain then you can just copy the metadata and get started with a bank account. It’s that simple and yet revolutionary.
Just imagine the implications of a platform comprising of above features in banking. This is what makes blockchain, not an option, but rather a necessity for banks. They can, of course, delay the switch but the switch to blockchain is inevitable and the experts of the industry agree to this. That is why all the top 10 to 20 banks of the world are investing heavily in the research over this technology.
Recommended Reading:
Blockchain in Healthcare: Opportunities, Challenges, and Applications
Top 10 Reputable Blockchain Development Companies in India
What are Decentralized Applications, DApps?

The post Applications of Blockchain to your Daily Banking Solutions appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

• Raw material sources
• Factories that use these raw materials and create final products
• Distribution network that delivers these clothes to consumers

On a global scale, the clothing supply chain consists of millions of people along with tonnes of water, crops, chemicals, and oil. This makes it difficult for manufacturers to find where the different parts of their products come from. The demand for increased speed, high volume, and cheaper consumption is increasing with each passing day. Due to this, when blind consumerism has valued the transparency of an ethical supply chain is compromised.

What is Supply Chain Management?

In more clear terms, Supply chain management includes the integrated planning as well as the execution of different processes. This involves material flow, information flow as well as financial capital flow. The management of the flow of goods, services, and information involving the storage and movement of raw materials, building products as well as full-fledged finished goods from one point to another is called as supply chain management. A supply chain within the SCM is a network of individual entities, organizations, businesses, resources as well as technologies that combine together in the manufacturing of a product or service.
Any supply chain progresses by initially delivering the raw materials from a supplier to a manufacturer and eventually ends by delivering the final product to the consumer. Proper implementation of supply chain management can result in benefits like increased sales and revenues, decreased frauds and overhead costs, quality improvisation. Moreover, this will also lead to accelerating production and distribution.
While all of this seems simple in theory, practically maintaining a supply chain is a tedious task even for small businesses. The interconnectivity of different elements in the supply chain gradually becomes more inefficient when a business grows. In order to resolve these inefficiencies and save a company’s money, different technologies like AI and Machine learning are being applied to SCM. Amongst these, blockchain is exploring new ways to change the overall game.

Supply Chain Challenges and Blockchain Solutions

Blockchain can be applied to many challenges of the Supply Chain industry such as complicated recordkeeping and tracking of products. As a less corruptible and better-automated alternative to centralized databases. Following are the ways in which blockchain can be useful in the supply chain industry.

Provenance Tracking

Big companies and organizations have a lot of elements in their supply chains. Due to this, it becomes almost impossible to keep track of each and every record even for multinational corporations. The lack of transparency leads to cost and customer relations issues which ultimately dilutes the brand name.
In a blockchain-based supply chain management, record keeping and provenance tracking become easy as the product information can be accessed through the help of embedded sensors and RFID tags. The history of a product right from its origination to where it is in the present time can be traced through blockchain. Moreover, this type of accurate provenance tracking can be used to detect frauds in any part of the supply chain.

Cost Reduction

The real-time tracking of a product in a supply chain with the help of blockchain reduces the overall cost of moving items in a supply chain. According to a survey of supply chain workers conducted by APQC and the Digital Supply Chain Institute (DSCI), more than one-third of people cited reduction of costs as the topmost benefit of application of Blockchain in supply chain management.
When blockchain is applied to speed up administrative processes in supply chains, the extra costs occurring in the system are automatically reduced while still guaranteeing the security of transactions. The elimination of the middlemen and intermediaries in the supply chain saves the risks of frauds, product duplicacy and saves money too. Payments can be processed by customers and suppliers within the supply chain by using cryptocurrencies rather than customers and suppliers rather than relying on EDI. Moreover, efficiency will be improved and the risk of losing products will be reduced with accurate recordkeeping.

Establishing Trust

Having trust in complex supply chains with many participants is necessary for smooth operations. For example, when a manufacturer shares his products with suppliers, he/she should be able to depend on them for following factory safety standards. Also, when it comes to regulatory compliances such as custom enforcers, trust plays a vital role. The immutable nature of blockchain in the supply chain is well-designed to prevent tampering and establishing trust.

Benefits of Supply Chain with Blockchain

One of the most appealing benefits of using blockchain for data is that it allows the data to be more interoperable. Due to this, it becomes easier for companies to share information and data with manufacturers, suppliers, and vendors. Transparency in Blockchain helps reduce delays and disputes while preventing goods from getting stuck in the supply chain. As each product can be tracked in real-time, the chances of misplacements are rare.
Blockchain offers scalability through which any large database is accessible from multiple locations from around the world. It also provides higher standards of security and the ability to customize according to the data feed. Moreover, blockchains can be created in a private manner too which will allow the data to be accessed explicitly between the parties who have the permission for it.
The value of adopting blockchain technology can be taken from the fact that it has the potential to connect different ledgers and data points while maintaining the data integrity among multiple participants. The properties of transparency and immutability of blockchain technology make it useful for eliminating frauds in supply chain and maintaining the integrity of the system.
Other than these, few other benefits of adopting Blockchain technology in the supply chain industry are:

1. Reduce or eliminate fraud and errors
2. Improve inventory management
3. Minimize courier costs
4. Reduce delays from paperwork
5. Identify issues faster
6. Increase consumer and partner trust

Supply Chain Management with Blockchain Use Cases

With its increasing popularity, blockchain technology seems like the solution to the problems of many industries today. Supply chain being one of the most populated industry holds certain use cases where the application of blockchain technology can make a difference. A single shipment of goods can have at least 20-25 people or organizations in the process which leads to roughly 200 interactions between them thus, leading to a lengthy process.
If applied correctly, blockchain technology can assure provenance tracking and traceability across the supply chain. This, in turn, will lead to fewer counterfeiters and ensured safety in the processes. Blockchain in the supply chain will also allow manufacturers, transporters, and end-users to collect data, study trends, and apply predictive monitoring process for better product experience. Following are some of the use cases of blockchain in a supply chain.

Seafood Verification

Seafood supply chain has caught the negative headlines many a time and still continues to do so due to the lack of a transparent system. The current seafood supply chain has tedious processes like manual recordkeeping that make it more prone to errors. Moreover, other issues that result in making the seafood supply chain inefficient are the improper food storage conditions, mislabeling frauds and prevalence of unregulated practices.
Due to these issues the quality and security of the food that reaches to the end-customer is compromised which threatens the industry’s economic security. Moreover, since there are the different type of frauds involved in the chain, the trust between the customers and vendors remain lacking.
Blockchain technology can prove to be a panacea to the seafood verification problems as it can track fish and seafood right from the production to its distribution. Big names such as Hyperledger have even started implementing the technology in their projects in order to resolve the issues of the seafood supply chain industry.
The project named Hyperledger Sawtooth is revolutionizing the supply chain by bringing traceability and accountability through its modular blockchain platform. It uses the PoET (the proof of elapsed time) consensus algorithm which allows actors in the system to reach a consensus in an environment where the counterparties are unaware of each other’s information.
Sawtooth allows the seafood to be detected in the supply chain through sensors that transmit the location and time of the products to the blockchain. This allows the buyer to access a comprehensive record of the product provenance.

Coffee Supply Chain

When you take a sip of that hot coffee in the morning from that big cup, you don’t even realize how long and complicated its supply chain must have been. The coffee supply chain in a global network that is highly complicated and is in a desperate need for reform.  Production of coffee is fragmented as it is usually grown in developing areas of the world that are at remote locations. Other factors that affect the production of coffee and should be taken into consideration are volatile prices and the effect of changing climates.
Moreover, since the people working as farmers and laborers in the coffee supply chains are from remote developing areas, there have been reported cases of abuses too. Due to the complexity of the system, the coffee supply chain makes an ideal use case for blockchain adoption and bring transparency and efficiency to the system.
A Denver based startup, Bext360 is using a blockchain enabled machine called “bextmachine” that is used to analyze the coffee beans from the farms and assign a number to them for their traceability. When looked for performance, the machine is able to process around 50 kgs of coffee in one minute. The machine is also capable of scanning the outer fruit of each bean in a three-dimensional manner. Moreover, the machine also provides quality details about the coffee at the farm level itself, thus making more room for improvisation.
Using blockchain in the coffee supply chain brings more productivity along with fair deals for producers and transparency as the system ensures direct payments to the farmers once their products are sold. On the other hand, the end customer can always look at the data and track the original source of their coffee.

Drugs and Pharmaceuticals

Drug supply chain is one facet of the pharma landscape that can be profited by blockchain. Counterfeit medicines are becoming increasingly troublesome as the global black market has been providing such drugs to people without getting under the radar. The risk of human life that rises from taking counterfeit drugs cannot be underestimated.
The WHO has reported an increased sales of global fake drugs from $75bn in 2010, a 90% increase over the next five years. The major suffering population due to drug counterfeiting is from developing countries like Asia and Africa where such drugs constitute to around 10 to 30 percent of the total medicines for sale. It is becoming increasingly important for pharmaceutical companies and distributors around the world to improve the security and traceability of the drug supply chain.
Taking the complexity of the current drug supply chain due to the growing number of people, there have to be reliable digital technologies and management systems that can secure the overall process. Blockchain technology can resolve this problem as it has become significantly popular in terms of applications relating to supply chain management.
System vulnerabilities in the drug supply chain lead to many pain points such as very little visibility for tracking and authenticating the products. The introduction of blockchain in such cases can reap several benefits here. Drugs can be tagged with barcodes and once they are scanned, their records can be kept on a blockchain in secure digital blocks. These records will be updated in real-time as the drugs are transferred from one entity to the other in the supply chain. Parties with authorized access, including patients, can check the records anytime.
The immutable nature of blockchain provides drug traceability from manufacturer to customer and allows people to check if the system is compromised somewhere. Apart from ensuring product integrity and anti-counterfeiting efforts, blockchain technology can help overcome the financial issues faced by smaller retailers and operators along the supply chain.

Food Supply Chain

The complexity of our food supply chain is increasing gradually and due to this, it is becoming difficult for the food producers, suppliers and retailers to ensure the provenance of the products through the supply chain.
Food safety issues including cross-contamination Identifying and the spread of foodborne illness are made even worse by lack of data and traceability.  the source of contamination and finding the root cause of that can take from days to months which ultimately leads to an increased number of sick people, loss of revenues, and wasted food. According to the WHO, one-out-of-ten people fall ill and around 420,000 die due to contaminated food.
Consumers are increasingly becoming aware and are demanding transparency in terms of the food they consume. Presently, about only 12 percent of consumers trust the brands that they purchase food from for the information of their food while 94 percent of consumers state that it is highly important for them to learn about all the information related to the food products that they buy.
Blockchain resolves the issues of a complex supply chain by providing neutrality in the platform. Since there are no third parties involved in the transaction authorization and everything works on the basis of a consensus, both, the users and the operators of the system have to follow set of rules to keep the system running.
Blockchain brings huge advantages for all the actors in food the supply chain. Food producers can ensure the originality and quality of their supplies by tracking the attempts of tampering as the food item moves in the supply chain. In case of identification of a fraud, the supplier will be intimidated and this notification can be sent to the retailer even before the food item reaches to its destination.
Similarly, in the case of retailers, if a damaged food product somehow makes it the stores, he/she can identify and remove only such offending items rather than checking the whole batch of supplies. With blockchain, consumers are treated with transparency and openness when they need assurance for the food products that they consume. This allows the consumers to identify and consume high quality food.

Automotive Supply Chain

Ranging from parts suppliers, manufacturers to sellers, the automotive supply chain is a highly complex and broad sector with multiple participants. Delivering real customer value requires analysis of existing  IT and business processes along with solutions that abide by the permissions of security, confidentiality, and authorization. Blockchain can turn out to be an ideal solutiMoreover, Ireland’s Moyee Coffee, on in such cases as it provides transparency across the entire supply chain along with reduced costs and complexity of dealing with multiple parties. For automotive suppliers, blockchain can be used to protect their brands from duplicate products and to create customer-centric business models.
In the automotive industry, counterfeit products raise a significant issue for the automotive manufacturers. Also, the current market of counterfeit spare parts is estimated at several billion dollars. Such products can make their way to the supply chain either directly or through the OEM and aftermarket suppliers. Counterfeit spare parts are not reliable as they have degraded quality level and they often tend to fail which brings dissatisfaction to the end customers ultimately leading them to revoke their trust in the brand. Introducing blockchain technology for counterfeiting products proves to be significantly advantageous as it allows spare parts to be identified uniquely and represent them digitally. Digital identification of spare parts adds transparency to the system and it can be shared among multiple parties in the network.
Inbound Logistics and Smart Manufacturing with blockchain can allow the automotive supply chain to be efficient. Currently, the tracking of individual components of an inbound supply chain is complex and prone to errors. The coordination among multi-tier suppliers, 3rd party logistics, and transportation companies through the manufacturing plant is necessary for effective functioning of the supply chain. By using blockchain, we can ensure the availability of accurate and real-time information amongst different parties. People involved can an check the status, quantity as well as the location of individual parts.
Similarly, the outbound supply chain is also a complex network which consists of distributors, manufacturers importers, and dealers. These participants don’t have a common data sharing model as well which makes it difficult for them to exchange information. A shared blockchain based system ensures visibility and transparency which, in turn, ensures faster transactions and lowering settlement periods.

Conclusion

Blockchain has introduced its potential to bring out positive changes in many industries and businesses till date including the supply chain industry. In fact, the supply chain management is one of the most obvious and useful applications of Blockchain technology, therefore, we can expect it to grow at a very fast pace in the near future. The source of successful operation of a supply chain management system is to keep a robust, transparent and end-to-end communication.
Companies are exploring ways to filter the way their supply chains currently work and adopt the change that the Blockchain technology has to offer. Once businesses see the bigger picture, they’ll eventually go through the hassle of applying newer systems embedded with blockchain in order to reap bigger benefits in the future. Dumping the paperwork and centralized databases will bring effective change in terms of higher rewards and increased performance among the supply chain teams.
This can be achieved if and only if the supply chain teams in place take notice of the latest technology trends in the blockchain space and find feasible ways to adopt the technology in their existing systems. The use of blockchain in supply chain management will work as a game changer by eliminating the vulnerabilities and inefficiencies of the current system.

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Though there are several roadblocks in the way currently, it can be surely said that Blockchain holds the potential to transform the finance and banking sectors by reducing potential costs and labor savings. According to a PwC report, 24% of financial executives from all around the world are very familiar with blockchain technology, with North Americans significantly more familiar than those from other regions. Observing the wide-reaching implications of the technology, companies are constantly researching to find out the ways of applying blockchain in multiple sectors.  
Talking specifically about the banking and finance sector, hundreds and thousands of funds are being regularly transferred from one region of the world to another within each day. This makes the global financial system one of the most popular sectors that could be benefited through the application of Blockchain. Operating on the basis of highly dependent manual networks, the banking and finance sector is prone to errors and frauds that could lead to a crippled money-management system. According to Global Fintech Report 2017, 77% of Fintech institutes expect to adopt blockchain as part of an in the production system or process by 2020.

Blockchain for Banking Industry

With the basic understanding of blockchain technology and its working, the real question that pops up into our minds is Blockchain really useful for the banking sector? If yes, then how can we utilize Blockchain in the best possible way for the industry? And most importantly, is blockchain here to stay or go?
According to a claim by the Harvard Business Review, blockchain will do to banks what the internet did to media. When it comes to banks and financial organizations of this day, Blockchain has the potential to solve a lot of problems. Blockchain technology possesses all the attractive characteristics needed by a reliable technology involving money matters. It is safe, secure, decentralized, transparent as well as relatively cheaper.
Blockchain provides a very high level of safety and security when it comes to exchanging data, information, and money. It also allows users to take advantage of the transparent network infrastructure along with low operational costs with the aid of decentralization. These characteristics make blockchain reliable, promising and in-demand solution for the banking and finance industry.
Financial institutes perform the necessary function of keeping money safe and secure for people and therefore, the processes in place require a lot of mediators. The involvement of these mediators is what makes the industry more expensive. Moreover, with the involvement of too many people and manual processes, the chances of errors and frauds always increase. Blockchain technology aims to do the heavy weightlifting by securing transactions and making the overall customer experience more satisfactory and less money consuming.

Examples of Some Banks Using Blockchain

Though the word blockchain was treated skeptically by banks and financial institutions in the early days of its adoption, the story has changed now. With the success of Blockchain in various industries, the banking sector is actively seeking new areas and applications of the Blockchain technology.
Big names like JP Morgan Chase have dedicatedly placed their faith in the future of Blockchain technology. The American multinational investment bank headquartered in New York City has started a new division called the Quorum division specifically for research and implementation of Blockchain technology. Quorum is a distributed ledger and smart contract platform for enterprises that supports speedy transactions and throughput addressing challenges for the finance industry, banks and beyond. According to resources, they have already issued a yearly deposit certificate based on a distributed registry with a variable rate.
Other than these, a major US bank, Bank of America has filed a patent document which was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The document talks about the implementation of a permissioned blockchain for securing records as well as authenticating business and personal data.
The system would allow only authorised participants to access the data and keep a log of all the logging entries. Moreover, the proposed system will utilize blockchain technology to combine multiple existing data storage platforms into one. This secure single network will increase the overall efficiency and reduce the number of storage locations of the user’s data.
Another name in the line is Goldman Sachs, who is actively involved in research and support of the distributed registry technology. They have invested in a cryptocurrency project called Circle. The project is considered as one of the most well funded startups in the blockchain space. It aims to solve the key problem of volatility in the digital currency space thus, making the finance sector more reliable with crypto options.
Backing such a popular project, Goldman Sachs group intends to become the leader in cryptocurrency adoption among their Wall Street competitors. They are also setting up their own cryptocurrency trading desk that will exclusively handle their digital trading.

Applications of Blockchain in Finance

With emerging use cases with each passing day, the blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt the banking and finance sector of current times. A few ways in which blockchain can change the current face of the banking industry are as follows:

Fraud Reduction

The involvement of money in any situation leads to increased chances of fraudulent activities. And for an overall sector operating on the very base model of money, security is of utmost importance. More than 40% of financial bodies and intermediaries including money transfer service providers as well as stock exchanges are susceptible to heavy losses relating to economic crimes annually.
Reason being the usage of centralized database systems for operations and money management. A centralized database system is vulnerable and highly prone to cyber attacks as the single point of failure, such systems can be exploited by hackers. Once a hacker gets access to such a system, it is a child’s play for him/her to take the money. This leads to the need for more secure systems that are strong enough to avoid such attacks.
Enter Blockchain, a secure, non-corruptible technology operating on a distributed database system. Since blockchain is distributed, there is no chance of a single point of failure. Each transaction is stored in the form of a block with a cryptographic mechanism which is extremely difficult to corrupt.
Moreover, all the blocks are linked to each other and due to this linking mechanism, if one block is breached all the other blocks on the blockchain immediately showcase the change. This, in turn, helps to track the breach and provides the hacker with no time to make changes in the overall system. With a secure Blockchain system in place, we can eliminate the cyber crimes and attacks of banking and financial sectors taking place in the current times.

Know Your Customer (KYC)

Banks and financial institutions are strictly concerned about the increasing costs that they have to bear in order to comply with AML and KYC i.e. Anti-money Laundering and Know Your Customer norms. All these processes consume a lot of time and have to be performed individually by all the banks and money based institutions.
According to a Thomson Reuters Survey, the overall estimated expenditure of these processes ranges from $60 million to $500 million yearly. These customers due diligence regulations are performed in order to reduce the money laundering as well as terrorist activities. Currently, banks need to upload the KYC data of a customer into a central registry which can be used for checking the information of an existing or new customer.
With the adoption of a blockchain system, the independent verification of each client by one bank or financial organization would be accessible for other banks to use so that the KYC process doesn’t have to be restarted again.
Meaning that the duplication of efforts would be eliminated by the aid of blockchain technology. Moreover, all the updates of clients’ will be to all financial institutions in near real-time. This would result in the reduction of administrative efforts as well as costs for compliance departments.

Smart Assets

Trade finance can become essentially challenging when transactions in the form of assets have to be recorded with a clear date and time stamp. Supply chains all around the world involve a lot many entities and components being bought and sold continuously. All paperwork involved in documenting the details of demand and supply is even more complicated. Blockchain can hold these records of smart assets in digitized form and get them updated in real-time. A smart asset system would not be limited to the entries of just objects moving from here to there but it can also have the track of where a particular item is delivered and where has it come from.
A smart asset tracking system for the banks and financial institutes competing in the current times holds a lot of scope in the competition. A bank with a rich data set can turn this data into valuable information for its clients with the aid of blockchain.

Smart Contracts

The application of smart contracts can prove particularly important in the banking and finance sector. A smart contract is a self-executable piece of code that runs when certain conditions written on it are completed.
Smart contracts, when used for financial transactions, would be helpful in increasing the speed and simplifying complex processes. This will also ensure the transfer of accurate information as the transaction will be approved only if all the written conditions of the code are met. Moreover, as these terms are visible to all the parties involved in the transactions, the chances of error at the time of execution are dropped drastically.

Trade Finance

Trade finance is considered one of the most useful applications of blockchain technology in the banking sector. All the involved parties such as a complex transaction can be on-boarded on a blockchain network and the information can be shared by exporters, importers, and banks on one common distributed ledger. Once certain specified conditions of the deal are met, the smart contracts will automatically execute themselves and the respective parties can view all the actions performed.
According to sources, an Israel-based start-up along with Barclays have successfully executed a trade transaction that would normally take 7 to 10 days in just 4 hours using Blockchain technology. When compared to the existing infrastructure, the use of blockchain can reduce costs dramatically relating to licensing, ticketing as well as other overhead charges.

Why Blockchain for Banking?

1. The current day banking systems are highly reliable on paper and outworn process. The Need of the hour is to have an upgraded system embedded with reliable and trustable technology that could withstand frauds, scalability and security issues. The blockchain technology and its decentralized nature can give the banking systems the much-needed edge they’re on the lookout for. 
2. Banks cannot be termed as independently operating self-sufficient entities as any transactions made through them still involve intermediaries. Moreover, the rate through which money is transferred on an international scale can still take up to 5 days along with entailing risks. With a blockchain system in place, banks would be able to make transfers real quick without even having to take the burden of risks as the system would be self-sufficient to resolve it all on its own.
3. The world is going digital and with this progress, even small transactions and payments are happening digitally. The economic activity rate is increasing and there’s no doubt in assuming that the rate will keep picking up in the coming days. The blockchain technology will make small transfers feasible and fast along with the aid of lower fee and scalability of transactions.
4. Financial services other than banks are constantly evolving their systems with the aid of the latest technology in order to secure the markets by providing economically available services at cheaper rates. Banking and other financial institutions should look forward to the adoption of new blockchain technology too in order to secure their place in the ecosystem.

Challenges in Adoption

Blockchain sure has its advantages in terms of adoption given its proposed features but there are some hurdles along the road as well which need to be addressed for banks and financial institutions to grow ahead with blockchain.

Interoperability: The blockchain technology is not bounded by any international rules and regulations that place a standard to it. With the increasing need for interoperability among large industries like banks, the technology needs to be compatible with different systems and should hold the potential to get adopted by the masses. The integration of existing systems with a blockchain based model is a big challenge today as the current systems and processes cannot be entirely eliminated. If the actual adoption of blockchain allows multiple systems to work together smoothly, operational feasibility can be achieved.
Privacy: Banks and financial institutions are the entities that are trusted by people for storing their funds. In order for blockchain to take their place, it is important to ensure that the data stored on the blockchain technology is kept securely and would not hamper the identity of any individual. As the transactions made on a public blockchain are publicly available, the need of exploring the potential of private blockchains for data-critical sectors is needed along with the resolution of issues like interoperability.
Encryption: Private keys are the essential elements of a blockchain as they play a significant role in securing the data of an individual on the blockchain. However, a private key generated once has to be kept very securely as once it is misplaced or lost, there’s no way to get it back. Moreover, the encryption used to store data can be compromised by finding loopholes in the network which in turn, makes the blockchain susceptible to hacker attacks.
Security: The blockchain network is secure and powerful as it is embedded with cryptography techniques. Cryptographic networks are complex to hack and thus, any kind of security breach in such networks would require a high amount of computational power in order to secure any hack. When a blockchain network is applied to any banking institution, it has to be secured with multiple security protocols. The network should be capable enough to restrict participating authorities to take control of the network only according to the access permission given to them. Depending upon the requirement, the blockchain involved in such systems or organizations could be permissioned or permissionless. People in an organization need to be handled with different levels of access permissions in order to save the overall network from malicious insiders and cyber hackers.
Scalability: Growth of existing databases is undeniable. The number of entries will keep on increasing as the number of people will continue to grow too. This poses a big challenge to the application of blockchain technology network. The network created through a blockchain should be able to handle the growing traffic while maintaining the speed of accessibility for the network participants. If the blockchain technology is applied to the current banking systems and institutions, it has to ensure the capacity of handling large volumes of data too.
Energy Consumption: Most of the current successfully running blockchain networks run on the concept of proof-of-work mechanism in which the network participants are rewarded based on how quickly they solve the equation to add a new block to the network. While this keeps the network working smoothly, it also increases the consumption of energy in enormous amounts in the form of computational work. This kind of computing power leaves massive carbon footprints which affect the environment. Before adopting Blockchain in an industry like banking, this issue needs to be resolved through alternate rewarding mechanisms.
Legal Regulations: If blockchain is applied in the banking sector, the need for international and national regulations around it will become mandatory. Currently, cryptocurrencies, the most popular application of blockchain, do not have any regulations around them which makes them susceptible to both profits and losses. However, if and when blockchain finds its place in the banking or finance sector, the regulations need to be in place so as to avoid chaos among people in case of any losses.

Conclusion

Despite the strict jurisdictions around the banking sector, the financial institutions have started to realize the potential of blockchain technology seeing the popularity of cryptocurrencies in the current markets. The big giants in the banking sector have started conducting the tests for finding out the possible use cases of this decentralized technology for their business processes.
Moreover, some of the organizations are also investing heavily in such researches and tests conducted by startups to develop blockchain based solutions. With Blockchain entering the current scenario, a lot of problems could be solved while making the system more transparent, easy to access and reliable.

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The 21st century is all about technology. With the increasing need for modernization in our day-to-day lives, people are open to accepting new technologies. From using a remote for controlling devices to using voice notes for giving commands; modern technology has made space in our regular lives. Technologies like augmented reality and IoT that have gained pace in the past decade and now there’s a new addition to the pack i.e. Blockchain Technology.
Blockchain – The revolutionary technology impacting different industries miraculously was introduced in the markets with its very first modern application Bitcoin. Bitcoin is nothing but a form of digital currency (cryptocurrency) which can be used in the place of fiat money for trading. And the underlying technology behind the success of cryptocurrencies is termed as Blockchain.
There’s a common misconception among people that Bitcoin and Blockchain are one and the same, however, that is not the case. Creating cryptocurrencies is one of the applications of Blockchain technology and other than Bitcoin, there are numerous applications that are being developed on the basis of the blockchain technology.

What is a Blockchain?

In the simplest terms, Blockchain can be explained as a data structure that holds transactional records and while ensuring security, transparency, and decentralization. You can also think of it as a chain or records stored in the forms of blocks which are controlled by no single authority. A blockchain is a distributed ledger that is completely open to any and everyone on the network. Once an information is stored on a blockchain, it is extremely difficult to change or alter it.
Each transaction on a blockchain is secured with a digital signature that proves its authenticity. Due to the use of encryption and digital signatures, the data stored on the blockchain is tamper-proof and cannot be changed.
Blockchain technology allows all the network participants to reach an agreement, commonly known as consensus. All the data stored on a blockchain is recorded digitally and has a common history which is available for all the network participants. This way, the chances of any fraudulent activity or duplication of transactions is eliminated without the need of a third-party.
In order to understand blockchain better, consider an example where you are looking for an option to send some money to your friend who lives in a different location. A general option that you can normally use can be a bank or via a payment transfer application like PayPal or Paytm. This option involves third parties in order to process the transaction due to which an extra amount of your money is deducted as transferring fee. Moreover, in cases like these, you cannot ensure the security of your money as it is highly possible that a hacker might disrupt the network and steal your money. In both the cases, it is the customer who suffers. This is where Blockchain comes in.
Instead of using a bank for transferring money, if we use a blockchain in such cases, the process becomes much easier and secure. There is no extra fee involved as the funds are directly processed by you thus, eliminating the need for a third party. Moreover, the blockchain database is decentralized and is not limited to any single location meaning that all the information and records kept on the blockchain are public and decentralized. Since the information is not stored in a single place, there’s no chance of corruption of the information by any hacker.

How Does a Blockchain Work?

A blockchain is a chain of blocks that contain data or information. Despite being discovered earlier, the first successful and popular application of the Blockchain technology came into being in the year 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. He created the first digital cryptocurrency called Bitcoin through the use of Blockchain technology. Let’s understand how a blockchain actually works.
Each block in a blockchain network stores some information along with the hash of its previous block. A hash is a unique mathematical code which belongs to a specific block. If the information inside the block is modified, the hash of the block will be subject to modification too. The connection of blocks through unique hash keys is what makes blockchain secure.
While transactions take place on a blockchain, there are nodes on the network that validate these transactions. In Bitcoin blockchain, these nodes are called as miners and they use the concept of proof-of-work in order to process and validate transactions on the network. In order for a transaction to be valid, each block must refer to the hash of its preceding block. The transaction will take place only and only if the hash is correct. If a hacker tries to attack the network and change information of any specific block, the hash attached to the block will also get modified.
The breach will be detected as the modified hash will not match with the original one. This ensures that the blockchain is unalterable as if any change which is made to the chain of blocks will be reflected throughout the entire network and will be detected easily.
In a nutshell, here’s how blockchain allows transactions to take place:

1. A blockchain network makes use of public and private keys in order to form a digital signature ensuring security and consent.
2. Once the authentication is ensured through these keys, the need for authorization arises.
3. Blockchain allows participants of the network to perform mathematical verifications and reach a consensus to agree on any particular value.
4. While making a transfer, the sender uses their private key and announces the transaction information over the network. A block is created containing information such as digital signature, timestamp, and the receiver’s public key.
5. This block of information is broadcasted through the network and the validation process starts.
6. Miners all over the network start solving the mathematical puzzle related to the transaction in order to process it. Solving this puzzle requires the miners to invest their computing power.
7. Upon solving the puzzle first, the miner receives rewards in the form of bitcoins. Such kind of problems is referred to as proof-of-work mathematical problems.
8. Once the majority of nodes in the network come to a consensus and agree to a common solution, the block is time stamped and added to the existing blockchain. This block can contain anything from money to data to messages.
9. After the new block is added to the chain, the existing copies of blockchain are updated for all the nodes on the network.

Blockchain Features

The following features make the revolutionary technology of blockchain stand out:

Decentralised

Blockchains are decentralized in nature meaning that no single person or group holds the authority of the overall network. While everybody in the network has the copy of the distributed ledger with them, no one can modify it on his or her own. This unique feature of blockchain allows transparency and security while giving power to the users.

Peer-to-Peer Network

With the use of Blockchain, the interaction between two parties through a peer-to-peer model is easily accomplished without the requirement of any third party. Blockchain uses P2P protocol which allows all the network participants to hold an identical copy of transactions, enabling approval through a machine consensus. For example, if you wish to make any transaction from one part of the world to another, you can do that with blockchain all by yourself within a few seconds. Moreover, any interruptions or extra charges will not be deducted in the transfer.

Immutable

The immutability property of a blockchain refers to the fact that any data once written on the blockchain cannot be changed. To understand immutability, consider sending email as an example. Once you send an email to a bunch of people, you cannot take it back. In order to find a way around, you’ll have to ask all the recipients to delete your email which is pretty tedious. This is how immutability works.
Once the data has been processed, it cannot be altered or changed. In case of the blockchain, if you try to change the data of one block, you’ll have to change the entire blockchain following it as each block stores the hash of its preceding block. Change in one hash will lead to change in all the following hashes. It is extremely complicated for someone to change all the hashes as it requires a lot of computational power to do so. Hence, the data stored in a blockchain is non-susceptible to alterations or hacker attacks due to immutability.

Tamper-Proof

With the property of immutability embedded in blockchains, it becomes easier to detect tampering of any data. Blockchains are considered tamper-proof as any change in even one single block can be detected and addressed smoothly. There are two key ways of detecting tampering namely, hashes and blocks.
As described earlier, each hash function associated with a block is unique. You can consider it like a fingerprint of a block. Any change in the data will lead to a change in the hash function. Since the hash function of one block is linked to next block, in order for a hacker to make any changes, he/she will have to change hashes of all the blocks after that block which is quite difficult to do.

Types of Blockchains

Though Blockchain has evolved to many levels since inception, there are two broad categories in which blockchains can be classified majorly i.e. Public and Private blockchains.
Before heading towards the difference between these two, let’s keep a check on the similarities that both public and private blockchain have:

• Both Public and Private blockchain have peer-to-peer decentralized networks.
• All the participants of the network maintain the copy of the shared ledger with them.
• The network maintains copies of the ledger and synchronizes the latest update with the help of consensus.
• The rules for immutability and safety of the ledger are decided and applied on the network so as to avoid malicious attacks.

Now that we know the similar elements of both these blockchains, let’s learn about each of them in detail and the differences between them.
Public Blockchain – As the name suggests, a public blockchain is a permissionless ledger and can be accessed by any and everyone. Anyone with the access to the internet is eligible to download and access it. Moreover, one can also check the overall history of the blockchain along with making any transactions through it. Public blockchains usually reward their network participants for performing the mining process and maintaining the immutability of the ledger. An example of the public blockchain is the Bitcoin Blockchain.
Public blockchains allow the communities worldwide to exchange information openly and securely. However, an obvious disadvantage of this type of blockchain is that it can be compromised if the rules around it are not executed strictly. Moreover, the rules decided and applied initially have very little scope of modification in the later stages.
Private Blockchain – Contrary to the public blockchain, private blockchains are the ones which are shared only among the trusted participants. The overall control of the network is in the hands of the owners. Moreover, the rules of a private blockchain can be changed according to different levels of permissions, exposure, number of members, authorization etc.
Private blockchains can run independently or can be integrated with other blockchains too. These are usually used by enterprises and organizations. Therefore, the level of trust required amongst the participants is higher in private blockchains.

Popular Applications of Blockchain Technology

Though Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies are the first popular application of Blockchain technology, they are not the only ones. The nature of Blockchain technology has led businesses, industries, and entrepreneurs from all around the world to explore the technology’s potential and make revolutionary changes in different sectors.
While the basic idea of trustworthy records and giving the power in the hands of users has enormous potential, it sure has raised a lot of hype in the markets too. The magic of this technology sure has the power to transform industries given the usage is planned and executable in actual senses. Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff and find out how Blockchain can be useful in actual implementation.

Smart contracts

Different businesses deal with each other in order to exchange services or products. All the give and take terms and conditions are signed by the involved parties in the form of agreements or contracts. However, these paper-based contracts are prone to errors and frauds which challenges the trust factor between both the parties and raises risks. Blockchain brings forward an amazing solution to this problem through Smart Contracts.
Smart contracts perform similar functions as paper-based agreements. The differentiating factor about smart contracts is that these are digital as well as self-executable in nature. Self-executable meaning that when certain conditions in the code of these contracts are met, they are automatically deployed. Ethereum, an open source blockchain platform has introduced smart contracts in the Blockchain ecosystem. Smart contracts can be used for different situations or industries such as financial agreements, health insurances, real estate property documents, crowdfunding etc.
For example, Blockchain smart contracts can be used in healthcare to manage drug supply.
Once the name and quantity of a drug is shipped from a manufacturing company to be delivered ahead to the pharmacist, a smart contract with all the valid data like the information of the drug, the quantity of supply etc. can be created. This smart contract will be responsible for managing the entries throughout the entire supply chain between different intermediaries. Since the smart contract works on certain defined conditions, no one can alter them or make any changes in the contract thus, ensuring trust and authenticity of the drugs.

Government Elections

No matter how secure government elections are made, the chances of frauds through anti-social elements always persists. The current voting system relies on manual processing and trust. Even if security breaches and frauds are eliminated, the chances of manual errors cannot be ignored. In such cases, the best solution is to automate the overall process with the help of smart contracts.
Blockchain smart contracts provide a modern system through which these common issues can be easily eliminated. Entries in the smart contracts will allow transparency and security while maintaining the privacy of the voters thus, enabling fair elections.

Identity management

The world is getting more digitized with every passing day. Consider financial transactions happening online for instance, you can easily login with your credentials and security pin in order to access your funds. However, in this case, no one can ensure the identity of the person taking out the money. If your username and password are hacked by someone, there’s no way to secure your money.
The need of the hour is to have a system that manages individual identification on the web. The distributed ledger technology used in blockchains offers you advanced methods of public-private encryption using which, you can prove your identity and digitize your documents. This unique secure identity can work as a saviour for you while conducting any financial transactions or any online interactions on a shared economy. Moreover, the gap between different government bodies and private organizations can be filled through a universal online identity solution that blockchain can provide.

Intellectual Property Protection

Digital content or information can easily be reproduced and distributed with the aid of the internet. Due to this, people from all around the world hold the power to copy, replicate and use it without giving credits to the actual producer of the content. There are copyright laws to protect such issues but in the current scenario, these laws aren’t appropriately defined according to common global standards. Meaning that any law which is valid in the US might not stand true in Australia.
Even if there’s any copyright applied to any intellectual property, people easily lose control over their data and suffer on financial terms. With the aid of Blockchain technology, all the copyrights can be stored in the form of smart contracts which will enable automation in businesses along with the increase in online sale thus, eliminating the redistribution risk.
Blockchain for IP registry will help the authors, owners or users to get clarity of copyright. Once they register their work online, they’ll own the evidence which will be tamper-proof. As blockchain is immutable in nature, any entry once stored on the Blockchain cannot be changed or modified. The owner of the work will have the overall authority over the ownership as well as the distribution of the content.

Conclusion

Other than these few examples, the revolutionary technology of Blockchain holds a high potential of applications in many different industries and sectors. While some industries have already started adopting blockchain in their businesses, many are still exploring the best possible ways to start with.
Blockchain is a new name in the world of technologies but it is definitely the one to last. Even in the early stages, the technology has gained huge popularity starting with their very first application of cryptocurrencies. More areas of applications are being discovered and tested with each passing day. Once the technology is adopted and accepted on a global level, it’ll transform the way we live today.

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