Towards A Cashless India

This is the concluding part of the three-part series of our discussion on cashless transactions. In the first part of this series, we discussed the advantages offered by digital transactions and its potential to change the way the world transacts.

- Prof R Mukundan & Prof KS Ranjani

We also discussed the concept of foundational technologies and why certain technologies require a different approach for widespread absorption. In the second part of the series, we discussed the impact of foundational technologies taking block chain as an example. In this article, we will examine the requirements to successfully map a sample transaction to a smart contract that incorporates block chain technology.

Advancement in technologies and encryption methods seeks to address fundamental weaknesses in an existing digital infrastructure. Smart contracts show their potential in large scale networks where data redundancies are inevitable and process capabilities are required in a multiple party set up to track and manage a deal. By ensuring visibility throughout a chain, smart contracts avoid data redundancy and allow participants to view and process data across multiple systems. The visibility throughout the chain leads to certainty in the contract implementation. Are there ways to optimize this large scale setup? Smart contracts have two main advantages – verifiability of what the contract code is and the transparency provided. Smart contracts are but pieces of software code, not a living document that is malleable to the vagaries of the market. Hence, choosing smart contracts requires a strong data driven relationship – a pure black and white and no grey in between! Smart contracts can model business process flow systematically and their distribution using block chain makes it verifiable down to the last syntax.