When people think of the blockchain, they think of people trading Bitcoin. The underlying foundation of cryptocurrency, i.e. the blockchain, is often not really considered.
Which is a shame as there are a lot of applications that can help any business, big or small. Even some governments are turning to the blockchain to help them streamline their bureaucracy process.
The blockchain is almost impossible to hack and can’t be manipulated. There is no server for the blockchain as instead, it is thousands of servers. The very nature of how it works is its own security.
In this article, I will go over several ways that your business can start using the blockchain to be more efficient and profitable.
International transactions
If you do business with vendors in different countries then it makes a lot of sense to use Bitcoin for payments. You can buy bitcoin with wire transfer and send it anywhere in the world with very low fees attached.
It takes all the hassle out of dealing with currency conversion and the fees that come with it. Not only that, but it is much faster. Banks take a while to process international transfers. Using Bitcoin takes mere minutes for the money to arrive.
Accept payments
There are a lot of people that prefer to pay with Bitcoin. Whether it is because they are abroad and don’t have a local bank account or that they like how secure it is, there is a growing number of consumers using it every day.
As a business, it makes sense to take advantage of this fact. That alone is not the only reason, however. Many merchant service payment processor companies charge very high fees. Plus a percentage of the sale. Which is why some businesses have set a minimum purchase rule.
That rule is against the TOS of many payment process providers. Instead, you can avoid high fees by accepting Bitcoin. There are no middlemen that take a cut of your profits when you accept cryptocurrency.
Smart contracts
A smart contract is a transaction that gets registered on the blockchain and effectively sealed. It cannot be hacked or changed in any way. There are hundreds if not thousands of ways for this to be helpful for a business.
Here are a few examples. Any deed can be kept on the blockchain for easy access and security. If you have intellectual property that you want to secure and also timestamp, then a smart contract is the best way to do that. And, any kind of business agreement can be registered on the blockchain and easily accessed by all parties.
Inventory control
The Internet of Things has made automating your inventory much easier since devices can all talk to each other now. The blockchain has taken the IoT and now made it a lot more secure and fast.
Switching from the cloud to the blockchain will make this process much more efficient. It can also help with any kind of supply chain logistics in addition to inventory.
