As an entrepreneur and CEO, I am always looking for use-cases and areas of business with inefficiencies. The saying goes, “You don’t know, what you don’t know.”

A few weeks ago, I went to purchase a $15 Starbucks gift card on a well-known online retailer for a friend. I went through the purchase process and received an email saying I needed to confirm my identity. Since I was a new customer to this online retailer it is required for all gift card purchases.

Upon receipt, I was instructed to send my passport or government ID to verify my identity and could NOT receive my $15 gift card until doing so. I decided to do some digging into the reasons behind these policies and why a retailer would risk seeing sensitive/private user information.

I was not surprised to learn it is to prevent fraud, money laundering, and other criminal activity. The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 requires financial institutions to report certain financial activities to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). These are things like withdrawals over $10,000 from your bank that you may have experienced before. But, in 2011 the Bank Secrecy Act was expanded to include, “providers and sellers of prepaid access,” which is defined as “A person that accepts payments for an initial or subsequent loading of prepaid access, including a general-purpose retailer such as a pharmacy, convenience store, supermarket, or discount store.”

Merchants like CVS and Walmart have issued internal policies to require a valid ID for purchases of $300 or more and online retailers have even lower thresholds as I have personally seen.

This is some of the exciting change that blockchain and Bridge can bring to businesses regarding compliance costs, which will benefit consumer data protection. The Bridge private chain will be able to act the authority to ensure your business meets global money laundering checks and ensure customer identity in new ways. Instead of sending/showing a photo of your passport to a store clerk or representative who doesn’t need all that information, you provide your public address or QR code to the merchant. The merchant then copies this address or scans a QR code that is then verified on our blockchain and compliance is confirmed or denied. All done in real time and very cost effective once the system is in place. The system can be customized and tailored for each individual business-need as regulations evolve.