One up on WeChat, the exciting possibilities of blockchain

After world war two, Japanese auto manufacturors were looked down on as copy cats who produced inferior products to their American counterparts.

All of a sudden this was no longer the case, the Japanese auto makers started producing innovative, cost effective and reliable cars which threatened and eventually overtook the US automotive industry as a whole.

A similar view has prevailed since the rise of China, with anything labeled ‘made in China’ giving off negative connotations.

The shift is beginning to happen today with the new tide of innovation coming from China. China has leapfrogged the US and the rest of the world in payments with the advent of technologies like WeChat and AliPay which are not only cheaper than credit/debit cards but offer a dazzling array of features, integration with services and near total adoption (even homeless people in China accept WeChat)

While I believe that payment technologies like WeChat and AliPay are far superior to any traditional system, it is my view that Blockchain technology can leapfrog this entirely.

An OS in your pocket — What makes WeChat and AliPay so awesome

WeChat is now so advanced that you can call your friend, make an order at a restaurant, jay walk on your way to the restaurant and receive a fine, take a taxi to the restaurant, pay your utility bills in the app, book a nice weekend vacation with your friend and split the bill without ever leaving the app.

The massive network effects and integration of services with ‘mini apps’ (small programs that run inside WeChat) allow you to do all your smartphones features inside the app.

The app is so advanced that it is now possible to receive a fine inside the app after the Chinese government began experimenting with mapping your identity via facial recognition picked up by CCTV at pedestrian crossings.

Seamless Integration of services — Why blockchain can leapfrog WeChat

You may be thinking, with all these excellent services existing inside WeChat, what could you possibly do to improve it further?

Issues with WeChat’s Model

To integrate services together, WeChat still requires agreement between companies and infrastructure to be built as a portal between them.

For example, let’s say that Singapore Airlines and Uber want to make a deal whereby if you have a business class ticket on Singapore airlines you can get free uber rides to the airport and your conference centre.

To make this happen in WeChat you would need to have a deal between the two companies and set up all kinds of API’s to interact with the services, including authentication, proof of ownership, a compensation model and various other details.

Doing this makes integration cumbersome, very expensive and requires a large degree of trust between the two service providers.

Not only that, but if you were a small service provider who wanted to capitalise on this opportunity by targeting business class customers; you would have a difficult time trying to agree to get Singapore Airlines or Uber to bother to even talk to you, let alone actually work with you.

Seamless integration with Blockchain

Let’s say this process is done again, except with a smart contract on ethereum and a wallet platform which would be the blockchain wallet equivalent of WeChat holding the users private key.

Let’s say that Singapore Airlines and Uber have tokens in a smart contract which represent the services they have to offer (i.e. a non fungible token representing a Singapore Airlines ticket and Uber ride credits) and that these tokens can be held inside the users wallet.

For Singapore Airlines to offer free rides on Uber, all that would have to happen is that the user receives their Business class ticket as a token which could then be used to prove ownership of a ticket in Uber’s smart contract or could allow Singapore Airlines’s contract to purchase Uber rides on behalf of the user.

This integration can happen without any arrangement between the two services and the user only has to purchase the ticket to make this all happen (no need to claim tokens on Uber).

Taking this example further, small service providers who target business class customers can easily offer discounts or other services to users holding a business class token. The user can even automatically receive an airdrop after purchasing the business class ticket token and if the user wants to make the purchase online, he can easily do so by logging in with his wallet and proving ownership of the token. This requires no infrastructure between the airline and the service provider and no agreement on terms.

In essence, this means that anyone can integrate their service with another and have it all working in the same platform without having to manually build portals between services and without needing to agree with each other on how to pull it off.

The Singapore airlines example I provided above is just a small possibility, there are many other service integrations that we cannot even imagine yet.

What our team at AlphaWallet is going to do about it

AlphaWallet is an easy to use Ethereum wallet with the goal to allow seamless interaction of tokenised services inside the app.

Our ultimate vision is to have a crypto wallet in every mobile phone and we hope to build the wallet platform to make blockchain technology accessible to everyone.

You can get download our app here on iOS and Android

What do you think the future of blockchain will look like? Leave your comments below