The idea is to develop high-security checks, using a unique code to prevent fraud and avoid the issuance of counterfeit checks.
Transparency, low cost, security, and the possibility of tracking real-time transactions are some of the advantages that blockchain technology offers to any sector that applies it. That is the case of the banking world, where blockchain will help prevent counterfeit checks through a new platform.
David Ramírez, a system engineer and member of the Libretec cooperative in Ecuador, considers that blockchain technology can also revolutionize the banking area. He ensures that Quito is experiencing a cultural change, in favor of technological appropriation and collaborative development.
According to the engineer, decentralized technologies are solid and positioned alternative in the public and private sector, which produces and disseminates technologies and services in the region. Blockchain is one of these new technologies.
For this reason, Ramírez put a lot of his professional development and effort into focusing the benefits that blockchain technology could bring to achieve a “transaction revolution”, designing a platform to develop digital checks based on blockchain technology.
Previous Blockchain Projects
Ramírez has a lot of experience developing projects related to blockchain technology for Ecuador. Among those projects that the partner of Libretec has developed, one of the most important and outstanding ones is the mobile wallet. This project led him to achieve a second place on the Digital Bank Quito 2018 competition, an annual and public event to discuss new technologies.
The mobile wallet project is a transaction processing system. It could be defined as an Internet payments platform based on blockchain technology. The objective of this platform was to revolutionize the person-to-person payments, which is a scheme that other countries have also worked on. Its main task is to transfer digital money between one mobile to another one or between mobile devices to points of sale.
Blockchain and Traditional Checkbooks
Blockcheck is the current project that Ramírez is developing. This is a platform to develop high-security checks since these checks are based on blockchain technology. The particularity and main characteristic of these checks are that they have a unique code to prevent fraud in these payment methods. The main idea is to avoid counterfeit checks.
But there are other projects that, although they are not developed in the same way, have a similar objective to that of Ramírez’s idea. The Argentine firm Pagos Futuros S.A. worked on the design and development of a platform that replaces the use of online paper checks.
These electronic checks created by the Argentine company are not very different from traditional checks since they also serve to make purchases or save money. The only thing that changes is its level of security since it has a code that cannot be modified. Emirates NBD, a Dubai government-owned bank, also designed a platform for issuing checks using blockchain technology.
In this way, blockchain technology would allow the elimination of some human errors in the traditional banking sector. It could also help with the validation, protection, encryption, distribution, and tracking of data related to financial transactions, allowing, in this way, the prevention of other types of fraud.
By María Rodríguez
