The possibilities and applications of a system like Request are wide and exciting. From online payments to invoicing, accounting, and audit, the improvements Request brings to those fields are numerous, not to forget the possible applications to the Internet of Things and the impacts on efficiency and transparency of our institutions.

Invoicing

With Request:

you share your bills on a decentralized ledger : no more invoice duplication between two parties, no risk of invoice loss.

: no more invoice duplication between two parties, no risk of invoice loss. you connect your invoicing to the payment (vs now: your invoicing software is disconnected from the payment of your sales invoices).

(vs now: your invoicing software is disconnected from the payment of your sales invoices). you are sure that your invoice is validated by the recipient in a short amount of time.

by the recipient in a short amount of time. the payer detects a payment request immediately and chooses to pay now or to be reminded about this request later (at the due date for example).

Online payments

The request protocol is the perfect candidate for online payments as shopping on Amazon will be :

simple because you do nothing but validate a payment request on your phone. You do not need to initiate a payment and you do not share your financial information with Amazon.

because you do nothing but validate a payment request on your phone. You do not need to initiate a payment and you do not share your financial information with Amazon. cost-effective for the merchant because no third party is involved such as Paypal which charges huge fees for a money transfer.

for the merchant because no third party is involved such as Paypal which charges huge fees for a money transfer. and secure because you don’t need a central authority anymore to rely on a company selling a product. The shared ledger allows to build trust and reputation.

Request can provide an escrow system to protect the seller and the buyer and a reputation system to detect phishing and bad payers. This brings trust in the system as small merchants can easily enter the market.

Accounting and Audit

We go one step further in terms of accounting automation as the Request Network acts as a unique source for accounting systems. An invoice isn’t recorded anymore separately in two independent accounting systems but in one universal ledger. The Request Network becomes a shared ledger for invoices on which accounting softwares are plugged. If a request is cancelled, the two systems are automatically updated.

More than automation, the payment is now linked to the invoice. There’s no need to reconcile banks with invoices anymore. You know instantly if the Request is paid or pending for payment.

With digital invoices automatically recorded and payments instantly detected, this enables real-time financial statements. There’s no need to wait for the end of the month or the year to know the financial health of your company. And with up-to-date information, a company can easily assure its shareholders, banks, or investors of its ability to reimburse a financial loan and to generate value. This helps to get quick financing.

Also thanks to the interoperability of the blockchain, this results in a simultaneous system. Imagine your taxes being declared directly to governments each time a request is validated. This completely changes the way we do our accounting today.

Besides accounting, financial audit will be facilitated by the emergence of Smart Audits. Auditing a company’s financial statements today is a long and painful process each year. The audit firm doesn’t have access to a common database of the audited company but to an upstream of paperwork. Thanks to the shared ledger of the Request Network, transactions can be audited in real-time with a smart algorithm. This is completely changing the way we do audits today.

Internet of Things

The emergence of objects, machines, and artificial intelligence interacting with each other is an exciting evolution of these next few years. The Request Network provides a clear and strong framework for the Internet of Things. It is able to provide a payment framework handling advanced payment conditions (late fees, down payment, taxes).

Imagine an autonomous car orders a new wheel to a virtual garage, makes a down payment and pays the remaining 90% only at delivery.

Transparency of institutions

Of course each can choose the confidentiality of its requests. In the case of our institutions, they can benefit from being public. Blockchain has the power to change relationships between citizens and states. With the Request Network, our governments and institutions can publish all their spending on the ledger.

Blockchain brings transparency and trust to our governments and institutions by opening and publishing their data to the public. Most citizens would be in favour of this transparency.

Blockchain also brings transparency and legitimacy to NGOs and associations willing to share their financial data to the public. By knowing exactly where the money goes, donors are informed and reassured and potential donors are more inclined to give money to the organizations they care about. Imagine you give 100€ to an international association and you know exactly in which country and what your money is used for. This system involves you even more in the cause.

Those are the biggest use cases of the Request Network. Beyond invoices, we can also imagine Requests for employee salaries and employee expenses. It would also work with real-time declarations to social organisms.

Going further in this direction, we can think of continuous payments. An employee isn’t anymore paid at the end of the month but paid continuously as his work progresses. He’ll pay his rent continuously, so his bank account is always up-to-date.

We already started working on partnerships with accounting, audit, and payment firms since we believe that a protocol like Request will help them reduce costs and ensure interoperability. Since going for merchant adoption would take years, we believe that partnership and network effects are the way to go for blockchain technology.

The team looks forward to seeing you on our slack!