Blockchain technology has turned out to be quite useful to industries beyond cryptocurrencies. One of the most useful benefits include the supply chain management, where blockchain has offered the benefits of traceability, cost-effectiveness, and transparency by tracking goods all the way from their origin, quantity and so on.
Other benefits include, quality assurance, to prevent irregularities, accounting, voting, peer-to-peer global transactions, energy supply, stock exchange and smart contracts. With smart contracts, agreements can be automatically validated, signed, and enforced through a blockchain construct.
Robert Cater Advocates for Blockchain Standards
FedEx Corporation’s Chief Information officer, Robert Carter is indeed an advocate for industry collaboration to scale blockchain. Speaking recently at the Blockchain Global Revolution Conference, Robert Carter strongly argued that blockchain standards would help both customs and border agents to build a chain of custody that would easily track the provenance of goods. Carter believes that mandated blockchain standards would help FedEx Delivery Company to identify and block the importation of illegal or counterfeit goods.
“There’s an incredible amount of information moving with an international package. An incredible amount of paperwork [such as] certificates of origin, and certain commodities require specific licenses. That information moves sometimes in digital forms and sometimes paper forms. As we move toward a more digital world, blockchain is where you piece all that together. Information about packages is as important, if not more so, as the packages themselves.”
FedEx keeps detailed records of what happens to each shipment using its own database and internal system, but despite that, implementing blockchain on its platform would allow the company to track freight even when it moves to other parts of the supply chain not owned by the platform.
Blockchain Gaining Mass Adoption
FedEx has joined hands with its two major competitors UPS and DHL Express to lobby for blockchain standards that could be deployed all across the delivery industry. The three companies are part of the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA).
Eugene Laney, head of international government affairs for DHL Express USA, agrees on the collaboration stating that;
‘’Blockchain’s potential to automatically track, trace and approve the legality of packages at every point in a supply chain could expedite customs clearance and reduce wait times at borders.’’
He also believes that people could use blockchain to automatically execute many transfers of packages such as those from airlines to truck carriers, and truck carriers to terminal operators and warehouses.
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