Top 8 Blockchain Use Cases for Businesses in 2020

Table of Contents

• Blockchain Use Cases for Businesses
• International Payments
• Insurance 
• Healthcare
• Digital Identity
• Accounting
• Supply Chain 
• Promotional Campaigns
• Decentralized Cloud Storages 
• Wrapping Up

To successfully digitize your business, you have to stay on top of every available technological trend. Blockchain is one of the technologies that you should pay your attention to. However, to apply it correctly, you have to know relevant use cases and real-life examples. Statista claims that blockchain can be applied in a wide variety of fields. That’s why, in this post, we’ll go through the most reasonable applications of blockchain for businesses. 

Blockchain Use Cases for Businesses

Blockchain is a diversified technology that can be applied to a wide range of business fields. Payment gateways, cloud storage, IoT networks, and other spheres can be improved with blockchain. Now, let’s figure out all up-to-date use cases of blockchain for businesses.

International Payments

For now, discreet fees and difficulties in tracing payments are the major concerns in international payments. During the transaction, intermediary banks have a chance to make modifications in ledgers and apply invisible fees. That’s why it may be hard to estimate the final sum that will be delivered to a receiver. 

Blockchain offers a solution to this problem. It provides a copy of the ledger for both parties involved in the transaction. If an attempt of data manipulation occurs, other nodes of the operation have to approve the modification. On top of that, blockchain also solves a traceability problem. After the exchange of the cryptocurrency to conventional money, it’s possible to see the credit card used for the transaction. 

Blockchain also offers new security measures for cross-border payments. Regular payments involve the bank as a centralized authority. Even though banks have top tier security systems, centralized systems still leave some space for hackers and fraudsters. 

Blockchain, in its turn, links each new transaction to the previous one and distributes it among other users in the network. As a result, to reach a specific payment, hackers have to modify each previous one. 

Insurance 

Insurance companies can make use of blockchain with the help of smart contracts. With smart contracts, customers can manage insurance claims via the blockchain. The network signs and keeps the data about all the claims. On top of that, smart contracts don’t allow customers to apply multiple insurance claims and help to monitor malicious activity. Thus, blockchain becomes a powerful tool for preventing insurance fraud. 

Healthcare

Data provided by patients to healthcare establishments require high-security measures. Such information, like age, gender, and basic health records, doesn’t allow third parties to identify the patient. Blockchain encryption algorithms allow to store this data in the network and provide access to users without any issues. 

Moreover, remote healthcare establishments often use IoT devices to monitor their patients’ condition. Even though IoT in healthcare appeared many years back, overall network protection leaves much to be desired. With blockchain, devices will store the data right on the blockchain network. Then, healthcare providers will be able to download it after identity verification. 

Digital Identity

Financial transactions and access to various sources are impossible without identity verification. Two-step authentications, face-to-face verification, biometric data verification surely bring much more security to various processes. On the other hand, additional actions take away our precious time. So, how can we automate these actions?

Distributed technologies allow users to register their identities in the blockchain network only once. Later, individuals will re-use the data without the need to register it for every service. While conventional authentication methods require passwords and unique codes, the blockchain checks a single private key.

Accounting

Accounting is one of the most slowly digitizing fields. The reason lies in strict regulations in terms of data validity and integrity. That’s why blockchain can be of great use for compliance matters and automating conventional double-entry bookkeeping. 

Instead of entering the data in separate records, companies can keep their transaction history in a common register protected by cryptographic algorithms. As a result, you get more transparent algorithms and improved workflow of your financial officers. On top of that, blockchain allows accountants to pay invoices with smart contracts. 

Supply Chain 

Blockchain can also be a useful technology in the field of deliveries. Supply chain management software has a lot of small details. If something goes wrong, the whole system may crash, and it’ll take a lot of effort to roll back the changes. Blockchain keeps track of everything that happens inside the system. In case of an unexpected software crash, you can restore missing information in several minutes. 

Promotional Campaigns

Companies often provide gifts and discounts to their clients. Such campaigns attract new customers, increase brand loyalty, and engage regular users to make purchases. However, this marketing strategy isn’t perfect. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t restrict the registration of multiple accounts. Therefore, clients can use the same promo code several times. 

Blockchain can solve this problem and help prevent scamming. Your e-commerce system can create unique certificates and assign them to each member of the blockchain network. Thus, when a promo offer has been redeemed, the certificate will no longer be available for the user. 

Decentralized Cloud Storages 

Decentralized Cloud Storages is a great idea for a startup. Apart from security, blockchain-based cloud storages are more cost-effective than conventional ones. Storj, for example, pays money to users for renting their free disk space. Then, this space is rented out to other users. 

Such a business model is beneficial for everyone. Besides, the final price clients pay for the storage is more reasonable than any other available on the market. Also, you can use distributed cloud storages to make operations with big data. It’s a great opportunity to cut down the storage expenses and allocate resources to other tasks. 

Wrapping Up

Now you see that blockchain technology isn’t just another rapid trend. It has been around for a long time, and with every year it gains even more potential. Entrepreneurs who chose this promising direction come up with new startups concerning the financial sphere, service sector, and cryptocurrencies.

Of course, blockchain needs time to surpass conventional databases completely. But when the time comes, those who were at the roots of blockchain will reap the rewards.

Author’s bio:

Vitaly Kuprenko is a technical writer at Cleveroad. It’s a web and mobile app development company in Ukraine. He enjoys telling about tech innovations and digital ways to boost businesses.