Personal Finance Essentials
The Commercial Uses of Blockchain Technology
From Salmon to Satellites:
Blockchain Is Rebuilding Global Commerce
There are thousands of commercial applications for blockchain technology. It lets governments, businesses and consumers operate faster, safer, at lower cost and with greater transparency. Some key uses:
Consumer Purchases
Digital assets let consumers skip the credit card infrastructure, with massive cost savings.
$20 trillion in credit card transactions were executed globally in 2025, representing 20% of global retail sales, according to Nilson. Visa and MasterCard handle 75% of global sales done online; their fees average 2%, which merchants pass along to consumers in the form of higher prices. Crypto can thus save consumers up to $400 billion a year!
Remittances
Every year, $4 trillion moves from one country to another, according to the World Bank. This includes $800 billion that immigrants send from one country to another – usually to family members living back home.
To send money to another country (called a cross-border transmittal) via the world’s banking system, you use SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications network. More than 11,000 banks process over 35 million of these transactions every day; each takes up to five days to process and costs an average of 6.7% of the amount being sent (up to 20% in some sub-Saharan African countries), according to the World Bank. If it’s Friday night, you’ll have to wait until Monday morning to tell your bank to initiate the transfer. (And let’s hope Monday isn’t a bank holiday.)
With blockchain technology, you can transfer money 24/7/365. Your recipient will receive the money in seconds, and the transaction will be virtually free – potentially saving consumers and businesses $268 billion a year.
Corporate Financing
Governments (including the Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Thailand, the European Investment Bank, and the World Bank) and corporations (including HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Societe Generale, and Santander) have sold bonds via the blockchain, reducing underwriting costs 35% — translating into higher yields for investors, according to Cashlink.
Foreign Trade
Companies doing business in many countries face significant financial risks because of routine delays in the banking system. When you use local currency to buy a product made overseas, the foreign merchant must convert your currency into its currency. The longer it takes for that conversion to occur, the greater the risk of price fluctuations between the two currencies. There are also fees to convert currency, even if you can do it quickly. It’s bad enough when you’re spending a few thousand dollars on a vacation in another country, but when corporations spend billions of dollars on purchases, the losses can be enormous.
Digital assets can solve both problems. Transfers occur in real-time, eliminating foreign-currency exchange-rate risk and alleviating cash flow concerns. With digital assets and blockchain, money can be exchanged within seconds at comparatively little cost. That’s a huge savings in time and cost.
Micro Payments
One issue preventing many industries from success is the inability to make payments in tiny amounts. In 2020, Bob Dylan sold his music catalog to a publishing company. What if that company decides to sell those rights to investors? It’d be cool to own a share of Mr. Tambourine Man – just imagine getting your share of the royalty every time the song is played on the radio or Spotify!
The problem is that your cut would be tiny. Dylan’s 600+ song catalog sold for a reported $400 million. Each song is therefore worth an average of about $667,000. Say the songs are sold for shares priced at $1,000 each – that’s about 6,700 shares of Mr. Tambourine Man. When the song is played on the radio, it earns a 9.1 cent royalty. If it plays 12 times a year, each of those shares would be entitled to a payment of $0.0016. That’s tiny, indeed.
No currency can handle this tiny transaction, as pennies are only two decimal places of a dollar. The cost of distributing a tiny payment creates another problem because the administrative cost of processing that tiny payment, including the labor to execute it, makes the idea economically unfeasible.
Unless you use bitcoin. Just as dollars are comprised of smaller units called the penny, bitcoin’s smaller unit is called the satoshi. One satoshi (or sat) is 0.00000001 of a bitcoin; 100 million satoshis = 1 bitcoin. Paying someone four satoshis is therefore easy, quick, and free of operational burden. Thus, blockchain makes micropayments possible, further boosting the potential for e‑commerce on a global basis.
Unbanked
The United Nations says one billion people are unbanked, meaning they don’t live near a bank or they lack the funds to open an account. Without a bank, you lack access to credit – and without that, you can’t attend college, or buy a car or house. Businesses can’t invest in factories, pay for research and product development, or finance the distribution of their products. Indeed, without access to credit, the global economy would be severely hampered.
But 60% of unbanked people have a smartphone, according to the Pew Foundation, and that’s all you need to receive, store and transmit digital assets. That lets virtually everyone create a transaction history of their income and purchases – which lets lenders determine their creditworthiness. And microlenders (those willing to lend as little as $25) can reach them. Suddenly, access to credit becomes available to everyone, without the involvement of banks.
A great example of this is M‑Pesa, launched in Kenya in March 2007 (M stands for mobile; pesa is Swahili for money). Today, 96% of Kenyan households use it; it’s also available in Albania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ghana, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Romania, and Tanzania.
M‑Pesa lets customers securely receive money, pay bills and store money. No bank account is required; all you need is a basic mobile phone (smartphone users can download an app). The Kenyan government says M‑Pesa has significantly reduced street robberies, burglaries, and corruption – all of which are common in cash-based economies. M‑Pesa has also allowed the creation of “smart meters,” pre-paid devices that let low-income households pay for electricity and water on a pay-as-you-go basis. M‑Pesa is also used to pay for food delivery to 100,000 refugees, eliminating middlemen and thus reducing the cost of distributing aid while creating employment opportunities for people in refugee camps.
Supply Chain Management
The supply chain refers to the movement of goods from the factory to the consumer. That chain is a long one, starting with raw materials and parts that are obtained or built and sent to a factory, then constructed or assembled, delivered to a wholesaler, then to a retailer, and ultimately to the consumer. It’s very expensive for manufacturers to order all those parts and track them and the finished products.
With blockchain technology, we can monitor goods and services as they flow through the supply chain. Traders, freight forwarders, inland transportation, ports and terminals, ocean carriers, as well as customs, regulatory agencies, law enforcement, and other authorities, all work within one secure system. Everyone shares real-time information, which captures shipping milestones, cargo details, trade documents, customs filings, sensor readings, and more. Because it’s trustless, the system fosters collaboration by digitizing and automating business processes integral to global trade.
The Norwegian Seafood Association is using a blockchain created by IBM to track salmon as they are bred, caught, stored, and shipped. At the grocer, consumers can scan each fish’s QR code to see when the fish was farmed and how long ago it left the sea. In turn, the fishermen can prevent fraud and reduce waste.
Or consider luxury watches. Some of the most prestigious watchmakers in the world, including Vacheron Constantin, Ulysse Nardin, and Breitling, are using blockchain technology to track each watch they manufacture. This allows buyers to authenticate a watch’s journey from the factory to the retailer, tracking repair history and guaranteeing authenticity upon changes in ownership.
Parmigiano-Reggiano producers use blockchain technology via edible microchips embedded in their cheese to combat counterfeiting. Each wheel of cheese has a unique digital identity, enabling supply chain tracking and verifying authenticity for consumers – targeting the $2 billion fake cheese market.
In 2016, Walmart tried to trace a contaminated package of mangoes to the source. It took the company 6 days, 18 hours, and 26 minutes. Now, the Walmart Food Safety and Collaboration Center uses blockchain technology to track its supply chain, and it can trace products across its stores within 2.2 seconds.
Virtually every industry can find value and benefit by deploying blockchain technology.
Self-Sovereign Identity
Rather than Facebook having, owning, and being able to use all your personal information without your knowledge or approval, and without any compensation to you, blockchain lets you control your personal identity and information. You get to grant access to your digital self as you choose, and you can be compensated for doing so.
Electronic Gaming
In addition to acquisition and subscription fees, gamers purchase avatars (digital versions of themselves to use while playing games), costumes and cosmetics, (because, after all, your avatar has to look good!), hints, weapons, and skill tools (to improve your gaming performance). Seven in 10 gamers pay for these purchases with credit and debit cards; only 3.2% pay with digital assets. Many games now offer proprietary tokens, forcing players to shop with them, just as a casino might require that guests use their chips in their coffee shop. The growth potential for digital assets is, therefore, enormous.
Increasingly, gamers aren’t spending money to play; instead, they’re earning it. Gamers can purchase digital assets to dress their avatars in clothing sold by Burberry, Nike, Dolce and Gabana, Tiffany and more – and they can resell their clothing to other gamers.