PayStand, the next generation B2B payment and billing company, is leveraging the blockchain in a completely new way for enterprise payments.
PayStand customers can now certify and notarize payments (from request to receipt) on the blockchain, ensuring the history of payments is secure, independently verifiable, and free of tampering.
Traditionally, third-party notaries or auditors manage certifying payment records. By utilizing the blockchain, organizations now have an independent, decentralized and cryptographically secure way to verify that a payment has been made and its information has not been tampered with, increasing the security and audit capabilities.
Fraud in trade finance alone accounts for nearly $4 trillion a year, due to exploitable flaws in manual record keeping. While standard record systems only ensure an audit trail once a recorded is altered, PayStand leverages a core feature of the blockchain called immutability, which creates a permanent record of all transactions. In an era where headlines of corruption are commonplace, immutable records can facilitate a much higher degree of transparency and accountability.
Jeremy Almond, CEO, PayStand, says, "Since the founding of the company, PayStand has been a huge believer that blockchain has the ability to radically transform financial services. Our newest blockchain certification product demonstrates our continued commitment to help enterprises leverage the cutting-edge and digital native technology to improve their payment, invoice, and billing process."
The way the new product works is simple: Every PayStand customer gets to choose if they want their payments to be certified. When they choose to enable certification, every payment request associated to an invoice has a hash of the requested amount and related information. That hash is confirmed on the blockchain as well as to the sender and recipient. At any time, the sender or recipient can verify the information by clicking on the certificate to make sure the records match what both parties have as well as the permanent and immutable record of the transaction. No information is stored on the blockchain, only the certification and audit trail. Additionally, all PayStand customers have access to a dashboard in which they can view the history of all payments and the certified audit trail of each.
Almond continued, "As the world becomes more digitally driven, it only seemed logical to document financial transaction with a more convenient, secure method. By using the blockchain, we're giving businesses the opportunity to eliminate human error. A blockchain certified payment receipt creates greater trust for all parties, enables added compliance and transparency in the system, makes for better digital tracking, and identifies fraud more easily. There's no doubt that blockchain processing will become more integrated with businesses' financial processes."