Altcoin News: IKEA Receives Digital Payment Using Ethereum Technology

October 3, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

In Europe, there are probably only a few households that do not have at least one piece of furniture belonging to the Swedish group: IKEA. With annual revenues of $38 billion in 2018, the provider dominates the home furniture market.

A small part of it took a branch in Sweden — but not by conventional payment. The transaction was conducted using technology from Ethereum and its Smart Contracts.

As thenextweb reports, the Swedish furniture giant took a big step towards blockchain technology. This is confirmed in a press release.

A total of four parties were involved:

IKEA

Tradeshift

Monerium

Nordic Store

Nordic Store is a local partner who buys from IKEA Island. The transaction was executed by Tradeshift using a specially designed version of the Icelandic currency. The special form of the Icelandic crown was developed by Start-Up Monerium on the basis of Ethereum. Monerium is an authenticated provider of licensed e-money for blockchains. According to the press release, additional currencies will be supported in the future in addition to the Icelandic krona.

The CEO of Monerium, Sveinn Valfells, is pleased with the successful completion of the transaction:

“As the first company authorized to issue e-money on blockchains, we are delighted to demonstrate the benefits of blockchains for mainstream B2B transactions using a legal form of digital money.”

While Valfells is convinced of Smart Contracts and Blockchain, he does not say a lot about cryptocurrency. These are too volatile and therefore not as well suited as e-money.

But in the future not only the transaction should become “smart”. Gert Sylvest, the co-founder of Tradeshift, wants to make the computation of invoices with so-called “smart invoices” smarter.

Author: Marko Vidrih