Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) on Wednesday unveiled an athletic performance record platform, Bravelog, as the company explores new financial technology outside of its core businesses.
Built on blockchain technology, the data stored on Bravelog is protected and secured from tampering, providing race event organizers a source of credible information on participating athletes, Fubon said.
Bravelog uses the Microsoft Corp Azure platform, a blockchain structure developed by AMIS (帳聯網路科技), an investee of Fubon Financial subsidiary, with the front end provided by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (工研院).
The product is to be used to store athletes’ performance data at a triathlon in Pingtung tomorrow.
“Due to regulatory constraints, we are testing blockchain applications in alternative markets before deploying the technology in financial products,” Fubon Financial vice president Eric Lee (李相臣) said at a news conference in Taipei.
Lee said that Fubon Financial and its peers are awaiting approval for a regulatory sandbox that would promote experimentation with innovative technology such as blockchains to deliver financial services.
The improved security and cost reductions enabled by blockchains could pave the way for insurers to offer new classes of products, Lee said.
“Using blockchains, low-price insurance policies against small mishaps such as flight delays could be offered for as little as NT$50 [US$1.56],” Lee said.
The technology would automate what would otherwise be a costly and lengthy process involving signing paperwork with a salesperson, making new low-cost products worthwhile, he said.
Clients could purchase the insurance on their mobile device and the system would verify flight data for delays and issue payments accordingly, Lee said.
As a blockchain creates an indelible chronological order of entries on a distributed ledger, it could be used to build a payment system with low transaction fees that does not require a deposit account or credit cards, he said.
In related news, Taipei-based blockchain start-up Bitmark Inc is building a system that aims to redefine property and ownership of assets in the digital age.
The archaic property systems of deeds and titles are no longer sufficient as people accumulate and create more digital content and assets, Bitmark chief operating officer Sean Moss-Pultz told the Taipei Times.
The start-up is developing a digital property rights systems built on a customized bitcoin blockchain.
Users can apply “bitmarks,” an ownership token on a digital asset, to pictures, multimedia files and even blog posts and tweets, which are then tracked by the company’s blockchain.
The digital assets include a person’s fitness and location data, which are highly valuable to businesses, Moss-Pultz said, adding that people should have the right to decide how that data is used, whether it is donated, sold or kept private, he said.
In addition to facilitating the trading of digital assets, the company hopes that its property system would be able to provide people with more control over their personal data by creating a means to exert ownership.
“Digital ecosystems currently use digital rights management, which does not give ownership to customers’ purchases,” Moss-Pultz said, adding that his firm’s system is taking the first step toward sharing of content and assets on a peer-to-peer basis without going through major ecosystems such as app stores.
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