Blockchain is disrupting industries like Fintech, Agriculture, Supply Chain Management, Pharmaceuticals, and Real Estate Registry. It has found unique solutions to some of the most pressing concerns of modern time. With the advent of big data and analytics, blockchain also provides pioneering solutions in data management.
The first and foremost application was found in the payments industry, with the introduction of cryptocurrencies, making them faster and more secure. In this article, we will look at how blockchain structure and Blockchain Payment Gateways can help make our payments secure.
Blockchain can be described as a living ledger with a network of peers who participate and monitor the assets and their transfers. They individually hold all the data of the blockchain but are collectively responsible for approving transactions. Data once approved is immutable and disincentives are present for shady or unscrupulous practices. This decentralized system has improved the efficiency, reliability, and security of countless industries.
Cryptocurrencies were the first application of blockchain technology, bitcoin, being the first of its kind. Any transaction or modification is accessible by all the users on the public ledger, adding a level of security. Just like fiat currencies issued by Central Banks, cryptocurrencies have all the properties: scarcity, fungibility, and non-repudiation but are not issued by a central authority. Instead, bitcoins are mined by solving complex mathematical puzzles related to the stamping of a transaction. Moreover, as this solution is impossible to falsify, it makes the complete architecture secure and very easy to verify.
The PCI (Payment Card Industry) Security Standards Council, a global forum created by leading payment networks such as American Express, Visa, and the likes believe that the payment industry is seldom prepared for changes. It works reactively to new threats and all-new payment method implementations are vulnerable to more modern attacks. For example, all critical payments information including credit card numbers, currently pass through the merchant’s payment systems and become the potential place for security breaches. A Blockchain Payment Gateway Development has the potential to eliminate this shortcoming.
Cryptocurrency is already accepted by a plethora of merchants and its usage is witnessing an upward trend. Consultants at PCI state that cryptocurrencies challenge these traditional approaches to privacy, trust, and security by its decentralized structure.
So far, centralized systems have controlled how payments are executed and users upheld their trust in the central institutions responsible for privacy and security. On the other hand, a cryptocurrency functions not on trust but on the integrity of the underlying algorithms governing the structure.
Every node holds a copy of the ledger and the protocol is governed by an MIT license open-source software. It uses a number of public security primitives and data structures that are well established. These include but are not limited to SHA256 hashes, Merkle trees, and Elliptic Curve Asymmetric Cryptography.
A group of transactions are used to form a block and this block is assigned a unique SHA256 hash. The subsequent block holds this hash key from the previous block and the cycle continues. This exercise links all the blocks to each other and forms a chain, which is known as a blockchain. Hence, it becomes impossible to modify a transaction once it has entered a block.
Firstly, cryptocurrencies provide an alternative to the current payment systems and highlight the flaws in the latter. Secondly, it provides a strong underlying architecture which can be used by Blockchain Development Companies to prepare future payment gateways and enhance security.
Cryptocurrencies are legal in most countries and with better regulations, its mainstream application can be witnessed pretty soon. The costs associated with cryptocurrencies to send and receive money are negligible compared to the current charges levied by card issuers, banks, and other intermediaries. Removal of intermediaries would also lead to shorter execution time and reduced risk of security breaches. A Blockchain Payment App Development would leverage all these benefits and provide a fool-proof, secure, inexpensive, and fast way to make payments.
Blockchain has the potential to acquire a huge market in the micropayments industry. Payment networks levy heavy charges in the form of a fixed + variable fee which goes exorbitantly high while handling very small payments.
The payments industry has seen major overhauls but struggled to keep pace with the growing internet and payment demands. Payment security is a big concern, especially when money is sent across borders and involves an exchange. In such a scenario, information passes through multiple processors and increases the likelihood of a data breach. A Blockchain Technology Payment Security offers the perfect solution through its decentralized system, thereby reducing intermediaries, costs, and risks in executing payments.
How Blockchain technology offers improvements to payments security