Member Case Study Archives – Page 2 of 2

May 19

Poste Italiane Turns to Hyperledger Besu to Streamline Multibrand Loyalty Program

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Besu, Member Case Study

Poste Italiane, the Italian postal service, is one of the country’s oldest and biggest organizations with a role that extends well beyond mail and package delivery. Today, Poste Italiane is not just mail delivery but an online marketplace. The Poste Italiane website offers financial products, logistics and insurance services as well as online payments to facilitate integrated communications throughout Italy. With 158 years of history, a network of more than 12,800 post offices, a workforce of 126,000, total financial assets of €536 billion and 35 million customers, Poste Italiane is at the center of Italian commerce.

As the center of commerce and online transactions, Poste Italiane wanted to support the companies within its ecosystem with customer acquisition and retention. Poste Italiane also wanted to encourage customers to engage with its merchant partners and follow their recommendations or accept offers through them.

Poste Italiane began working with the loyalty programs in 2017 when, in partnership with SIA, it created the Extra Sconti App that enables cost savings to debit card holders that also use Postepay cards. Instead of starting with a network of big shops, it created a platform called Sconti BancoPosta that initially served over 30 thousand small merchants and soon grew to other well-known brands.

What makes Poste Italiane’s platform stand out is the creation of a single point of access to multiple loyalty schemes and formation of a loyalty point exchange. It is common for customers to log into an airline miles/rewards account only to see they’re 100 miles shy of a travel reward. The Poste Italiane solution lets customers combine points from different programs to reach the threshold required to purchase the rewards, making it a truly customer centric approach. When customers only accrue points with one merchant, the value of those points are limited.

To build this solution, Poste Italiane turned to blockchain technology, specifically, Hyperledger Besu. The system uses blockchain for digital wallets, tokens and smart contracts to deliver value for consumers and the retail partners in the system.

Customers can easily access their accounts and rewards, via a mobile app provided either by Poste Italiane or any of the partners and set up their account. After accepting the terms and conditions, a new wallet is generated. Whenever they want to use their rewards, they can create a voucher that combines points from various programs and is redeemable in the system. The collection of points is also digital – the user can generate a QRcode that represents their wallet address where the partner and merchants can transfer the points. While having a single platform makes it convenient for consumers, they can still use the designated apps from various merchants and use the Poste Italiane app to transfer their points and convert them into loyalty tokens on the platform.

Points, vouchers and any other assets that consumers collect through the partner programs in the Poste Italiane app get converted to loyalty tokens. This way, all are equal and can be moved seamlessly between partners. Thanks to smart contracts, it is possible to establish rules that allow the programmability of the tokens for the management of the entire network. Any transaction, be it earning points, exchanging them for tokens or purchasing a reward, happens through a smart contract. Using smart contracts makes the system much more trustworthy and transparent.

Hyperledger worked up with Poste Italians on a case study that details the vital role of loyalty programs in retail and how this solution works to create a differentiated experience for retail partners and consumers. Read the full case study here.

Apr 28

Love1

BondEvalue Upends the Global Bond Market Using Hyperledger Sawtooth

By Hyperledger Blog, Finance, Hyperledger Sawtooth, Member Case Study

As many industries struggled to find their footing amid the aggressive headwinds caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the global bond market has managed to thrive. With near zero interest rates implemented worldwide to ease the financial burdens caused by the coronavirus, the demand for bonds soared.

But for those interested in investing in international bonds, the bond markets in Asia and Europe are particularly hard to break into for two reasons: high investment thresholds and lack of electronic infrastructure.

In the international bond markets, the minimum investment is $200,000. Typically, only those who have $5 million or above can afford to diversify their portfolio, and they pour about one-third of their wealth into bonds.

But there are roughly 500 million people who have assets that range from $100,000 to $1 million and are eager to expand their portfolio. However, they find the bond market impenetrable because of the investment barrier.

For those who have the means to break into the international bond market, it can still be a challenge as trading in the bond markets still happens over the phone and involves a number of intermediaries, with everyone taking a cut.

To make managing bonds faster, more accessible, and more technologically advanced, the team at BondEvalue recognized the need to upend the global bond market and create a modern infrastructure. In November 2019, BondEvalue launched the BondbloX Bond Exchange, replacing the traditional over-the-counter trading experience with the world’s first fully regulated blockchain-based bond exchange that allows consumers to instantaneously and transparently trade bonds in smaller denominations of $1,000 each.

Fully licensed and regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore as a Recognized Market Operator, the BondbloX Bond Exchange operates under a strategic partnership with Northern Trust, which is the exclusive custodian for the exchange. Together they deliver integrated asset servicing and digital ownership of fractionalized fixed income bonds on a blockchain network.

Using depository receipts as a model, traditional bonds are brought into the BondbloX Bond Exchange through designated market makers or a member participant from a secondary market. A designated custodian on the exchange (in this case, Northern Trust) confirms receipt of the bond into the blockchain, which then triggers the bond to be divided into fractionalized BondbloX worth $1,000 each and backed one-to-one on the blockchain.

These BondbloX are then traded on the BondbloX Bond Exchange and, with the blockchain infrastructure, settlement is nearly instantaneous, occurring on a T+0 basis. So instead of waiting for the normal two-day settlement cycle for traditional bond transactions, BondbloX trades are final within seconds, reducing counterparty settlement risks for investors.

The BondEvalue team realized the only way to feed the beast of building an innovative, groundbreaking global bond exchange would be to deploy Hyperledger Sawtooth. As a modular and flexible architecture, Hyperledger Sawtooth allows developers to separate the core system from the application domain so smart contracts can specify the business rules for applications without needing to know the underlying design of the core system.

Hyperledger worked up with BondEvalue on a case study that details how the exchange works, the technology and governance behind it and plans to scale to include more participants in more markets.

Read the full case study here.

Mar 04

Love0

Easing World Trade: Avanza Innovation, Hyperledger Fabric and Dubai’s Digital Silk Road

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Member Case Study

As part of Dubai 10X, an initiative to put Dubai 10 years ahead of other world cities in terms of technology, the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Port Authority, called DP World, formed a joint team to develop the Digital Silk Road. This smart platform would aim to solve the global trading system’s key issues–high costs, low trust, and lack of transparency using blockchain technology.

The Digital Silk Road is a broad, multi-year initiative. It’s intended to be a one-stop digital trading platform, marketplace, and matchmaker for people seeking and providing trade services. The starting point was two projects that serve as the foundation for the Digital Silk Road: Unification of Trade Registration and Export Authorization.

In Dubai, registering to import or export even a single container of goods was neither smooth nor easy. In reality, it was a lengthy process that touched on many authorities.

First, a company needed to register for a trade license to operate in the country. To import or export, it also registered with DP World. Next it registered with Dubai Trade, Dubai Chamber of Commerce, and Dubai Customs. And if the trader ever updated anything? There would be gaps in the information among authorities.

For export, the process took even more steps. Exporters needed a Certificate of Origin, issued by Dubai Chamber. The exporter took the certificate and export declaration to DP World to gather documentation. Then to Dubai Customs to gather more documentation. All those documents would move from one organization to another until the goods finally left the country.

Dubai Chamber and DP World wanted to break ground on the Digital Silk by unifying trade registrations and replicate information across all the authorities. They also set a goal streamlining the exporting process and making it paperless. So they teamed up with Avanza Innovations on the Unification of Trade Registration and the Export Authorization projects, which went live in January 2020. Avanza built and deployed the projects on Hyperledger Fabric as it was a mature, tested blockchain platform that had demonstrated it could handle production-grade transactions

Now, with the Unification of Trade Registration, a company wanting to do business in Dubai can register once, through a secure, single-window interface. The data gets distributed across all government trade entities. And if the company needs to update any information, the new information is instantly shared by all.

Export Authorization tracks trade transactions, reduces transaction time, and enables secure, encrypted digital authentication. Seamless documentation sharing with relevant government entities happens through smart contracts. Compliance and regulatory checks happen throughout the process, which is completely paperless.

Hyperledger worked up with Avanza Innovation on a case study that covers blockchain’s role in Dubai’s ambitious technology plans, details the initial Digital Silk Road projects that are in production now, automating international trade, and previews future plans for the digital marketplace.

Read the full case study here.

Jan 20

Love1

Kiva Protocol, Built on Hyperledger Indy, Ursa and Aries, Powers Africa’s First Decentralized National ID system

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Ursa, Member Case Study

For the 1.7 billion unbanked adults around the world, access to financial services is extremely limited. Without even a basic savings account, economic opportunity is often limited to informal offerings such as local shopkeepers who extend credit to their customers, microfinance institutions that work to serve the last mile, and community savings and credit associations that are setup by individuals living in the same village.

In the unbanked world, individuals borrow a few hundred to a few thousand dollars at a time, paying back over a relatively short time frame of 12-18 months. But despite excellent credit records, they are unable to receive even similar credit facilities at local banks. This is because the data from their informal transactions is essentially invisible: the banks either do not trust the data sources, or are otherwise unable to verify the provenance of the data.

While this is the state of the world today, it does not have to be our future. Kiva, a US-based nonprofit organization focused on financial inclusion, has built Kiva Protocol to bridge the data disconnect and help enable universal financial access. In 2019, Sierra Leone, a West African nation of about 7 million, launched the National Digital Identity Platform (NDIP) that used Kiva Protocol to enable fast, cheap, and secure identity verification for its citizens.

Kiva Protocol is built using Hyperledger Indy, Aries, and Ursa, and as implemented in Sierra Leone, allows citizens to perform electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) verifications in about 11 seconds, using just their national ID number and a fingerprint. With this verification, it is possible for the nation’s unbanked to open a savings account and move into the formally banked population.

To find the right platform, Kiva assessed more than 20 software stacks, both centralized and decentralized. Blockchain and decentralized ledger technologies quickly emerged as good solutions for the developing world as they enable data provenance at the protocol level and stakeholders can act relatively independently to enable their various activities in the formal and informal sectors.

After deep consideration, Kiva decided to use Hyperledger’s stack for identity: Indy, Aries, Ursa. While all three projects are closely related, each has a distinct mandate:

Hyperledger Indy is a distributed ledger purpose-built for decentralized ID with transferable, private, and secure credentials;
Hyperledger Aries is infrastructure that supports interactions between peers and between blockchains and other DLTs; and
Hyperledger Ursa is a modular, flexible library that enables developers to share time-tested and secure cryptography.

In August 2019, Kiva launched the beta of Kiva Protocol with a public event opened by the president of Sierra Leone. Since that launch, global regulators have made significant progress in terms of how they are considering digital identity and eKYC verifications. There is a growing global movement towards user-owned and -controlled data, better privacy, and more universal access.

As of today, Kiva is focusing on building additional ecosystem applications and services to make it easier for all stakeholders to access and use Kiva Protocol. Much of this is being contributed upstream into the Hyperledger Indy and Aires projects, with the remaining components hosted in Kiva’s repository.

Hyperledger teamed up with Kiva on a detailed case study covering the challenges of the unbanked, requirements for a solution that delivers fast, cheap and secure ID exchange, and plans for expanding Kiva Protocols’ use to other countries and other applications.

Read the full case study here.

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