What are the top use cases for distributed ledger technology in payments?

In this video, I’m going to cover the top use cases of distributed ledger technology and digital assets for payments.

First up: consumer payments. The remittance industry was one of the first to use stablecoins – helping people without bank accounts to send money around the world.

Moneygram for example announced its partnership with the Stellar blockchain in 2022. Customers can buy the USDC stablecoin for cash. It’s sent across the blockchain and converted back into cash at the other end.

We’ve also seen brands and retailers adopt DLT. Starbucks, Tesla and Gucci are some of brands that let you pay in crypto.According to Deloitte, nearly three-quarters of US retailers are planning to accept crypto payments in the next few years. If you’re playing in an online casino, you might also find cryptocurrencies as a payment method and in some cases, you can pay your insurance premium with crypto …

Now, from consumers to employees. According to surveys, more than a third of millennials and half of Gen Z say they’re open to receiving some of their salary in crypto. That number’s even higher for gig economy workers

So, what about business to business payments?

Moving money internationally with traditional bank networks like Swift can be slow, and expensive. Blockchains and digital assets can help on both fronts. Some of the first businesses to try out DLT for payments include: payment service providers, remittance companies and FX brokers. A number of multinationals have also announced that they’re using stablecoins, including software giant SAP.

Here at BVNK, many of our customers use stablecoins. The common use cases we see, include:

• treasury management –  that’s companies who need to move money between their different entities around the world
• paying out to suppliers or partners, or
• collecting payments from partners, affiliates or customers

… especially in countries where banking infrastructure is slow

So those are just some of the popular use cases right now. But in time, it’s likely that all payments will interact with DLT in some form –  and we’ll see even more payment teams using it as part of a multi-rail payments strategy.