Tradeshift and Monerium announce the successful completion of a transaction that marks a major step forward in business payments and finance. Using Tradeshift’s platform and smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, Icelandic retailer Nordic Store purchased goods from IKEA Iceland and settled an e-invoice with Monerium’s programmable digital cash.

Future of business payments is now operational

With the transaction, Monerium and Tradeshift prove government-regulated, programmable e-money is ready for mainstream markets. A new category of blockchain-powered payments is now a reality.

“Programmable money regulated by governments will become the foundation for e-commerce payments because they enable so called ‘smart contracts.’ Smart contracts have many use cases. For example they can be used to generate ‘Smart Invoices’, which are invoices that basically settle themselves,”

said Gert Sylvest, co-founder of Tradeshift and GM of Tradeshift Frontiers, a digital incubation unit.

“We see smart invoices not just as useful for lowering administrative hurdles in business-to-business (B2B) cross-border transactions, but for building new financing models that makes it easier for enterprises to improve access to credit and improve cash flow. That is why we have built the world’s first smart invoice and now settled it with licensed digital cash together with Monerium. This is an important step forward.”

The transaction is in line with predictions made recently by Gartner, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Economic Forum (WEF). Gartner predicts that blockchain and smart contracts will have transformative impact on a 2-5 year horizon.

IMF foresees blockchain-based forms of e-money enabling “seamless payment of automated transactions” and substantial efficiency gains from back-office tasks. Last but not least, WEF projects that 10% of global gross domestic product will be stored on blockchain technology by 2027 .

Featured image credit: Pixabay