Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) yesterday announced that it has begun internal testing among its staff of a blockchain-based wallet service that streamlines taxi-hailing and payments, ahead of regulatory approval for wider applications of the technology.
The company said the service would leverage the distributed ledger technology’s attributes that include traceability, improved security and indelibility, adding that it is expected to bring cost savings and improve administrative efficiency.
The new service would cut the expense reporting process for taxi rides down to a single confirmation, without requiring the use of a separate card, or needing to input payment amounts for each ride, the company said, adding that taxis also do not need to install additional terminals to accept the service.
The service is the result of a collaboration between the Industrial Technology Research Institute’s (ITRI) Information and Communications Research Laboratories and iBosscom (互動網數位科技), which operates the helloTaxi (叫車通) app.
The new blockchain payment platform could be deployed to a wide range of vendors and consumers with minimal set-up costs and transaction fees, ITRI said.
The company has since 2015 been stepping up financial technology investments to innovate new solutions in technologies such as biometric identification vitrifaction, big data and electronic payments.
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