E-Commerce thrives. Online sales steadily grow by about 20% every year. To sustain this growth, online shops leverage every possible technology that helps them to be more efficient and get ahead of the competition to sell more, faster and at better prices.
We have presented on our blog a number of Blockchain applications and use cases in Finance, Supply Chain and Healthcare, it’s time to discover opportunities that Blockchain creates for E-Commerce. Take a look, and imagine how you can use it in your business.
Blockchain Use Cases in E-Commerce
Online Payments
Of course, when we think about Blockchain, the topic of cryptocurrencies has to come up sooner or later – and that is because this technology is perfect to create a trustless value exchange system.
You can use existing solutions, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and hundreds of others, or create your own currency to raise money and change it into a utility token, that will grant special rights to some of your customers. It can significantly cut the middleman costs, help you improve your cash flow and raise funding.
And of course, it gives your customers alternative – an additional direct, fast and efficient payment method.
Loyalty system
Here is our gem – 4soft created such a system for one of our clients in Thailand. Let me describe it in greater detail.
Imagine that you have a couple of companies, that came up with an idea to create a loyalty system network. What will be the best system to handle that? They cannot trust each other in 100%, and using the help of a trusted third party might come with additional costs, that will jeopardize the whole project.
Blockchain allows this group of companies to grant each other a node in the network, that gives access to the data, permission to add own transactions, guarantees transparency and unifies the loyalty points, so the customer can spend them in any of the companies.
Here is a short video that describes our solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St3G-QtCuho
Of course, the loyalty system collects data on how people use your shop and allows you to create personalized offers and maximize your earnings. What is more, you can introduce your loyalty tokens in the form of an ICO, and collect additional funds this way.
Reviews
Online reviews are unreliable and often just full of unjustified trash talk. With Blockchain, you can verify them better, and double-check if the review comes from a solicit source.
It gives your e-store better protection, but also gives potential clients more reliable data on your business. The authenticity of feedback can be a significant value for the customer and help him to make a purchase decision.
Supply Chain Management
Every shop has to master the supply chain to fulfill the orders in time. Efficiency and speed require perfect organization, communication, and tight processes. Faster, more accurate and reliable e-Commerce can build a better brand, and scale their business better.
It is the backbone of many industries. We wrote a separate article on supply chain management on a blockchain, so if you are interested in learning more, check it out.
Benefits of Blockchain in E-Commerce
Fast transactions
In general, speed is not one of the pros of introducing Blockchain. Comparing to a traditional database, blockchain needs more time to react due to multiple nodes and the necessity for additional internal communication and validation.
However, if you compare it to international payments like SWIFT, it is still a much faster solution. You can get a reasonably quick transfer confirmation from the network.
Cutting costs
There is no middleman in the blockchain network. You do not have to pay a central authority to take
