From pharma to automotive – Explore the top-rated blockchain use cases by industry

1. Payments:

Bank customers primarily use their accounts for financial transactions, and that makes payments a crucial part of banking. Traditional banking is giving way to an updated, more digital form. Banks from around the world are investing in new technologies to power their digital transformation. Banks have a vested interest in customer experience, and blockchain can help banks create a safe and secure experience for all their customers. Blockchain platforms allows customers to pay each other in a peer-to-peer (P2P) way, making international transactions easier.

2. KYC and Identity Management:

Identity authentication and authorization are crucial for banks to protect their customers from frauds and cybercrimes. Blockchain technology, can simplify this process for banks to a great extent. Onboarding a new customer is expensive and time-consuming. If a customer is registered once, blockchain technology will avoid the whole verification process for the services, using the same decentralized ledger. The customer information will be updated on the database in real-time and can be shared for verification in the future.

3. Trade Finance:

Trade finance involves paper documents such as credits, bills, invoices, etc. The current digital systems available are time-consuming. Using blockchain-based systems for trade finance allows seamless interaction of users through consensus. Blockchain technology brings transparency in pricing and smart contracts enable faster transactions and seamless interaction of users through consensus.

1. Eliminating Counterfeit Parts:

Counterfeit car parts sellers are not only stealing money from OEMs and their partners but are also putting the lives of drivers and passengers at risk. Blockchain technology will provide a way to track the provenance of car parts using RFID tags. All the information of the parts will be stored in a distributed ledger, allowing the customers to verify the authenticity of the spare parts they buy.

2. Self-driving Cars Development:

The development of self-driving cars involves handling a huge amount of data related to driver behavior, traffic management, auto parts, etc. Blockchain with its distributed ledger technology provides a fast and secure means to share and manage these sensitive data between researchers, vehicle users, and auto manufacturers.

Read more about the role of blockchain technology in autonomous vehicles:

3. Vehicle leasing and sales:

Odometer frauds, incorrect data on accident history and maintenance, etc., are common in the used car market. Introducing blockchain based solutions into this space will help the customers verify the vehicle history and make the right purchase without blindly believing the salesmen. Since blockchain is an immutable ledger, every vehicle data entered from the time of its manufacture will be available for future verification.

1. Claims Management:

Insurance companies are under constant pressure from customers and regulatory bodies to settle claims faster. Smart contracts in blockchain technology will speed up the claims management and settlement process by eliminating the majority of the paperwork, duplicated work, and possible human error. Smart contract-based insurance policies can automatically process the claims, transfer information between customers and insurers, and settle payments on time.

2. Fraud detection and prevention:

The insurance industry is prone to fraud, and it can cost customers hundreds of dollars in premium each year. Blockchain technology with its distributed ledger allows insurance companies to share claims data and verify whether a claim is paid. It also enables insurers to know a customer’s claims and payment history in real-time and identify any suspicious behavior.

3. Tailor-made premium plans:

Insurers can customize premiums for customers based on their behavior. For auto insurance, using a blockchain network for sharing driver behavior data, insurers can determine the insurance premiums based on the accident and claims history. Similarly, for health insurance customers, insurance companies can evaluate the health condition of a patient from an existing health data blockchain network and determine the premium. This helps low-risk customers to pay a lower premium compared to the high-risk ones.

4. Reinsurance:

Insurance companies insure themselves with reinsurers to survive when too many claims occur at once. Insurance companies usually have multiple reinsurers, and it requires real-time information sharing to all of them to settle claims. By maintaining a blockchain-based shared ledger, information like claim amount, premiums, and losses will be available to reinsurers faster, thereby saving a lot of time on verification and paperwork.

1. Stop Counterfeit Drugs:

Counterfeit drugs are a major threat to pharmaceutical companies and the consumers who use them. A blockchain-based supply chain solution will help to track the provenance of drugs. Manufacturers and customers can have full visibility of the drugs in each stage of the supply chain.

2. Electronic Health Records Management:

The current health records management systems face lots of problems. They are not regularly updated and provide incomplete information about a patient’s health and treatment history. In many countries, health records are not digitized, which result in data loss. Using a blockchain-based health records management system, patients and hospitals can update the treatments and medications into a shared distributed ledger that can be accessed with the patient’s consent.

3. Remote Monitoring:

Remote health monitoring using sensors to measure patients’ vital signs and using this data to provide better healthcare is one of the fastest-growing areas in healthcare. But the use of IoT technology poses a security threat since this sensitive data can be altered to create false information. A blockchain-based system will cryptographically secure this sensitive data and can be accessed only with patient’s content. Since the ledger is immutable, any suspicious alterations can be tracked to its source.

4. Compliance and reporting:

Many consumers rely on prescription drugs on a daily basis. It is vital for the pharmaceutical supply chain to remain efficient because overstocking will cause wastage and understocking could cause a shortage of prescription drugs. Blockchain makes automation of compliance and reporting and helps to eliminate the paperwork, errors and time involved in manual reporting. Blockchain compliance will further enhance corporate governance by providing information in real-time and seamlessly distributing data to the stakeholders.

1. Sales automation:

The real estate purchase and sales process involves a lot of paperwork and takes a long time. Smart contracts in blockchain technology have the potential to automate and simplify the real estate sales process. Buyers and sellers can set up the sales conditions on the smart contracts and process the payments.

2. Asset tokenization:

Real estate assets can be converted to tokens that represent the total worth of the property and can be traded instead of the whole property. This will create fractional investment opportunities for people who cannot afford to buy a large property. Real estate investors can own a particular portion of an asset by purchasing tokens rather than buying the whole property.

3. Defending Frauds:

Deed frauds are very common in real estate and blockchain technology can help prevent this. Updating the sales deed, ownership, and legal records into a shared, immutable blockchain ledger will prevent the sales of the asset to a third party without being detected. Mortgage frauds are another common form of real estate fraud. By maintaining a ledger of all the owner information and mortgage details on a blockchain network, false information, and misrepresentations for obtaining a mortgage loan can be easily detected.

4. Property management:

Blockchain technology helps to save cost and time by improving operational efficiency in property management. It ensures streamlined payments and rental collections to property owners and provides premium due diligence across the portfolio. Blockchain technology also generates richer data and ensures secure data sharing to facilitate better decision-making.

5. Land and property registries:

Land registries involve tons of paperwork and a multitude of legal procedures. These documents are vulnerable to forgery, loss, and mismanagement. Blockchain technology solves these problems with its distributed ledger technology that acts as a single source of truth shared between the stakeholders. Blockchain eliminates the long documentation processes with digital assets and allows tracking changes in real-time on the immutable ledger.

1. Track and trace:

One of the biggest applications of blockchain technology is to bring end-to-end traceability in supply chain. By incorporating blockchain technology into the supply chain management systems, products can be tracked from their source to the end consumer ensuring transparency, safety, and authenticity of the products.

2. Ensure product safety:

Products like food and prescription drugs are prone to contamination. It is required to constantly track these products in the supply chain to identify defective batches and enable faster recalls. Constantly updating the product data into a shared ledger on a blockchain network at each point in the supply chain network will allow companies to constantly track and identify the condition of the products.

3. Payments and finance:

Blockchain technology helps to achieve supplier payments faster and with a high level of transparency. Payments can be verified by any party with permission and they cannot be altered since the blockchain ledger is immutable. Smart contracts can be used to automate payments and ensure faster supply chain finance.