Blockchain - The Edge Technology of Payment Solutions
Amid the speculation around bitcoin, the distributive feature of the technology is now being recognised by government watchdogs and financial institutions around the world. The US Federal Reserve issued Distributed Ledger Technology in Payment, Clearing and Settlement in December 2016 to present its extensive research on the applicability of blockchain in financial trading and payment solutions. The research paper highlights the fact that blockchain may help speed up and simplify the current slow and cumbersome cross-border payments processes. The Bank of England in The Macroeconomics of Central Bank Issued Digital Currencies examines a digital currency backed by DLT that may help reduce interest rates, distortionary taxes and transaction costs, which eventually benefit the economy. Another hot discussed blockchain-based element is smart contract, a computer program that automatically performs some actions (terms or conditions) of a contract once the pre-defined conditions are fulfilled.
We are now living in the Web 3.0, where the practices in the Internet are moving away from centralisation and one-way to decentralisation and interaction. As a veteran of payment solutions business, Payment Asia is now exploring the potential of DLT for merchants in different business sectors and looking forward to implementing the cryptographic and distributive technology in the latest ecommerce practices. Of course, it takes time for computer scientists and legal experts to address the storage capacity, reliability and legal concern, but once the peer-to-peer (P2P) technology is widely applied, the time and cost of intra- and international trading and transaction would be saved. It is the reason why Payment Asia decides to invest in blockchain in order to maintain the quality of our payment solutions on the edge, and ultimately assist merchants with access to the new-era technology. We envisage the day of P2P exchange of goods and services would come to our daily life soon, and the application of DLT, like cryptocurrency and smart contract, would be the key for merchants standing out from the crowd in the foreseeable future.
William has been focusing in advanced analytics, big data and artificial intelligence business development in Greater China Region in the past decade, and recently joint the camp of Payment Asia for new technology development. Beside his solid background in retail and finance industry, he is also an entrepreneur to start his own logistic company, one of the most successful e-commerce fulfilment partners in HK.