Online shopping is great, bringing features like convenience, great prices and a wide selection of goods which can be delivered to your doorstep in couple of days. This method of shopping has been deemed superior to that of traditional shopping nowadays, especially by Gen Y. As more E-commerce platforms pops up, it’s safe to say that people have grown accustomed to technology and its utilization to make their lives easier.

In 2017, an estimated 1.66 billion people worldwide purchased goods online

However, the primary reason for those who have never tried online shopping has always centred on 1 key reason; TRUST. Questions like “Is the product genuine?” or “What if the product never arrives?!” have always been challenges of E-commerce sites in garnering both buyers and sellers to use their platform. A new study has shown that E-commerce fraud resulted in $57.8 Billion in losses in 2017 which is an increase of total fraud of 5.5% from 2016 to 2017 marking a trend of escalating scam incidents in the industry. E-commerce sites started improving reliability of sellers with ratings whereby any transaction dealt are rated by the buyers in terms of product condition and delivery time but nonetheless, this approach is not effective as buyers can intentionally lay a bad rating.

11.64 percent: fraud rate of transactions exceeding $500, 22 times higher than the rate of transactions worth less than $100

Hence how do we bridge the gap of trust between the buyers, sellers and the platform? Luckily, Blockchain ledger fundamentals prove the transactions made by the sellers with previous buyers. Having said that, implementing identity verification with solutions like Xenchain will provide confidence boost for e-commerce players as buyers and sellers will be validated before performing transactions. A numerical value can be allotted to both buyers and sellers to ensure that they are trusted entities with a satisfactory background. This is done by completing questions posed by 3rd parties such as credit bureaus, civil registry or banks.

To establish a safe and secure online marketplace ecosystem, many adjustments need to be made and it all starts with credible merchants and consumers. Moving forward, we hope to see E-commerce sites applying eKYC and Blockchain into their business model to fully maximize the benefits of Blockchain technology.

Join our Digital Identity project and learn about the ecosystem on https://xenchain.io/ or join our active Telegram group at https://t.me/xenchainio