Welcome to a cashless future

Yet for some in the tech space, the internet is insecure for payments and an entirely new approach is required. Blockchain database technology is offering a solution. “We are just piling up duct tape and PVC over a fundamentally impossible-to-secure system,” says Nick Williamson, CEO and co-founder of the blockchain company Credits.

Credits has recently signed a deal with the UK government’s technology provider, Skyscape Cloud Services, to deliver blockchain-as-a-service to the UK public sector. Currently, blockchain is best known as the giant ledger system that records global Bitcoin transactions. However, a host of major banks, investors and governments see its potential as a ledger for all kinds of deals and transactions. The reason they do is that this decentralised, immutable ledger has enormous security benefits and is regarded by many as effectively unhackable. As Williamson says: “The blockchain can potentially cut off entire classes of fraud that have burned us time and time again and created billions of losses to the world economy every year for decades.”