Blockchain Use Cases: Benefits For Businesses
Blockchain use cases have gone far beyond the financial sector and cryptocurrency. In fact, forecasts suggest that spending on blockchain solutions will continue to grow in the coming years, reaching over almost $18 billion by 2024. The business value added by blockchain will surpass $176 billion by 2025 and $3.1 trillion by 2030. Such industries as insurance, healthcare are starting to use blockchain technology but it’s believed that blockchain could transform many more industries. Ultimately, there are virtually endless use cases for a transparent, verifiable transaction data register – particularly because blockchain operates through a decentralized platform that doesn’t require central control, making it resistant to fraud.
While many companies use blockchain to achieve greater transparency across the digital information ecosystem, few of us know how it will impact several industries apart from the financial sector.
This blog post aims to show you the main benefits of using blockchain applications for business, highlighting real-life use cases of the technology in different industries.
Advantages of Blockchain for Businesses
Blockchain can reduce the costs of the total amount by 2-3% and provide guaranteed, real-time transactions across borders. Businesses can get up to 25% improvement in customer experience due to faster processing and use of digital channels. And up to 40% increase in efficiency due to straight-through processing and a single source of truth. As well as 95% reduction in errors due to the elimination of out of sync ledgers and reconciliations. Here are the key advantages blockchain technology applications offer to various businesses:
Transparency. In a distributed ledger every transaction is recorded publicly. Public access allows everyone to verify the system working correctly.
Integrity. Everything is archived and authorized in a decentralized way and the system ensures that data is processed in a reliable and transparent way.
Immutability. A third-party cannot make any changes to the system.
Security. With no central point to be exploited, the system is protected against hacking attacks and fraud.
No Intermediaries. Peer-to-peer and business-to-business transactions are completed without the need to involve any 3d party.
Customer-oriented. Transparent solutions allow streamlining and automating communication with customers, enabling a higher level of trust.
Innovation. Blockchain introduces a completely new business model, providing valuable competitive advantages.
Top 10 Blockchain Use Cases by Industry
Below are top 10 business niches that use blockchain technology in their solutions and the benefits they get out of it.
1. Blockchain in Healthcare
If you wonder what can blockchain be used for in medicine, the answer is: “it is used to do miracles”. The truth is that there is no single industry that can benefit from blockchain as much as healthcare can do. The potential of the blockchain technology in healthcare covers but not limited to solutions aimed at:
- Improving drug supply chain
- Managing and accessing drug trial data for research purposes
- Clinical trial bookkeeping
- Finding the right people for the medical trial
- Consent management
- Filling up forms for hospital intake
- Credential verifications for physicians
- Secure data transfer
- Payment processing and interoperability
- Revenue cycle management;
- Improving medical adherence
- Medical history management and sharing
For more information please read our article on how blockchain technology is used in healthcare industry.
2. Blockchain in Banking & Finance
Introduced to a wide audience together with Bitcoin, blockchain remains linked to cryptocurrency by many even for now. But when it comes to using blockchain technology in banking, not everyone can name at least a couple of its real-life use cases. Meanwhile, apart from crypto-payments, there are numerous alternative use cases for blockchain, including those aimed at improving clearing and settlement procedures, remaking trade finance for the modern world, addressing shortcomings related to cross-border payments, complimenting anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYL) regulations.
Already offering dozens of effective solutions and many other upcoming in the near future, blockchain opportunities for banks look extremely promising. Banks can reduce their operational costs by 30% per year by introducing blockchain technology. So what are the main improvements blockchain brings to the banking sector? See them below:
- Interbank transactions
- Remittance
- Smart contract enforcement
- Crypro banking
- Record sharing&storage
- Regulatory technology
- Loan Syndication
- KYC/AMI
- Regulatory reporting
- Trade finance
- Increasing transparency
- Serving the unbanked
- Data security
3. Blockchain in Retail
Blockchain business applications address many challenges retailers are facing. Here are some examples of how to use blockchain in retail to enhance its processes and increase customer satisfaction.
- Establish a more transparent supply chain for the customer
- Offer payments with cryptocurrency
- Share browsing and purchase data with retailers to improve customer identity
- Improve the process of attaining tax refunds from retail purchases
- Reduce cyb