A chatbot is an in-demand platform to activate customers to interact with businesses, collect information, or execute automated actions.
In traditional days, chatbots were used for carrying out financial transactions. However, financial institutions faced many security issues such as secure authentication, system availability, data integrity, and transparency, which hindered chatbots from their widespread adoption.
The introduction of blockchain technology, also called bitcoin technology, has emerged as a new hope in the financial industry.
Blockchain technology has given a new scope for businesses to overcome the security issues encountered with chatbots.
Blockchain technology emerged with a number of security benefits and became a basic technology that could potentially disrupt several application domains, specifically in the financial sector.
Moreover, blockchain can reduce 30% of banks’ infrastructure costs. (Source: CoinJournal)
Blockchain is a basic technology for cryptocurrency, but it’s much more intense and possibly more interesting for its other uses.
Apart from financial industries, it’s done by many more industries to make their products more credible.
To further add, 90% of government organizations plan to invest in blockchain technology. (Source: BTCManager)
Why Does Blockchain Need Chatbots?
Though chatbots are widely being used, the question of security is always in the mind of people, whether it secures their data or not. It is where Blockchain can help.
The global blockchain technology market is assumed to gain $20 billion in revenue by 2024.(Techjury)
Integrating Blockchain to chatbots can create a backend capability that, for instance, shows the user the number of completed transactions done by that chatbot. It also shows the company’s trust score on the blockchain network.
Let’s understand Bitcoin first-
Blockchain is a standalone technology that empowers a variety of ledge-based applications. Initially, Blockchain is an immutable, distributed ledger that ensures that a transaction happens, and it is called Distributed Ledger Technology(DLT).
Enabling everyone to access this ledger improves accountability without using a centralized database like a bank. The Blockchain has built trust between buyers and sellers, who doubt chatbots to do any transactions or share their confidential information.
How Does Blockchain Work?
When information is sent from source to source, a new timestamp is generated, which is added to a ledger, and at the same time, replicated through many trusted copies.
This ledger is accessible to everyone on the supply chain. At each point, which is also called nodes, the information gets a unique timestamp, which enables the information to be accurately found. It’s like a checkout slip in the back of a library book.
The main difference here is that human intervention is removed, which allows for a high number of transactions to happen at once, and validation checks through many-multiples of copies, making it secure and trusting for Bitcoin’s users.
Using Blockchain technology, Bitcoin removed the need for a third-party or centralized bank to ensure that your money is safe and transactions are successful.
Blockchain provides transparency to its users about where their money comes from and goes. On the other hand, banks will only allow you to see your transactions, which constrains you to see the journey of your money from the time you receive it to spending it.
How is Blockchain Technology Useful for Chatbots?
Though Blockchain was created for cryptocurrency, Blockchain is being used in many applications to improve the performance of their products.
Here are some examples of the areas where blockchain technology is found to be useful-
Point of Sales
If you’re creating chatbots for e-commerce businesses where chatbots take orders and execute purchases, deploying blockchain technology into sales chatbots enables the customer to trust that they have given their credit card details to the right platform and receive the product. The chatbot will acquire a reputation score, which can be shown to future customers to build trust and improve their confidence to do transactions over chatbots.
Time Sensitive Documentation
Most of the products in the market come with a warranty card, and people feel secure that their products are protected, but at the time of using, hardly some people will use it. To overcome this issue with customers, they create a chatbot that digitally registers warranties for the company’s products.
A customer has to take a picture of the warranty‘s QR code and send it to the company’s bot, then blockchain technology stores the information. It protects both the company and customers from fraudulent claims.
Smart Contracts
Chatbots can even handle the contracts between the two business parties once the documents are filled out and filed. In chatbots, Blockchain’s timestamp technology serves as a digital notary.
Let’s discuss some of the use cases of blockchain technology:
Use case 1 :
Sam ordered a gift for his friend’s birthday, which comes from China and will be shipped directly to his friend in India. He would like to share the ‘OTP’ or ‘PIN’ with his friend for this transaction, facilitated by Blockchain.
Use case 2 :
Sam’s friend’s gift was just shipped from China and is in transit now. The chatbot lets Sam know and provides him with a way to track his status.
Use case 3 :
Since the chatbot knows that Sam shared the access key with his friend previously, he asks him if he would like him to communicate with his friends.
Use case 4 :
Sam wants to track the status of a different order; He can do so by interacting with a chatbot or simply scanning the order number. He will get the details.
Use case 5 :
Sam needs some help. He can chat with a chatbot, and if that doesn’t work, he can connect him directly to his friends at the service desk.
Are you Ready to Deploy Blockchain Technology for your Chatbot?
Building a Blockchain network is a complex task best suited for large companies to deploy for their large projects. Small organizations find it difficult to have a sotaff that supports and secures a large blockchain supply. The chatbot market is developing rapidly; this chatbot with blockchain technology solution will be more accessible to even smaller development teams. Most probably, entire industries will have access to an open-source blockchain network providing a simple and easy onboarding process for SMEs.
These blockchain networks are presently being built at an enterprise level in shipping, healthcare, financial, and global supply networks. And other service providers have enormous opportunities to build blockchain networks that serve broader markets.
Other Applications
Apart from the applications mentioned above, blockchain technology has so many possible applications, which include-
- Medical records
- Receipt management
- Chat logs, phone logs
- Asset management
- Elections
- Photo and video validation
- Personalized financial planning
- Identity indemnification
- Supply-chain management and inspection
- Product Authentication
- Insurance adjustment
With the rise of chatbots, demand and worries around security, chatbot- Blockchain works together and can work well for future applications.
Conclusion
With the above discussions, it’s clear how important blockchain technology is for the financial industries to use chatbots in their business operations. The combination of chatbots with blockchain technology has built a high level of trust between sellers and customers.
Chatbots using blockchain technology have widespread adoption among financial and other industries. Apart from financial industries, chatbots with blockchain are widely being used by the Healthcare industry.
The issues previously financial industries used to suffer and arguments the executives need to answer to the customer have reduced to a minimum with the adoption of blockchain technology. Chatbots-blockchain technology helped the financial sectors automate tasks and collect all the information and transaction histories.
It will also allow companies to engage with other companies with full confidence without worrying about losing their confidential data.
Smatbot chatbot applies the same technology to secure interactions and transactions. Want to know more about chatbot and Blockchain technology and how we ensure the security of chatbots? Contact our Smatbot Team.
We are glad to assist you round the clock.