In doing my research on this subject all I found were links to #ecommerce blogs talking about social media, personalisation and speaking person to person.

That is all well and good, but #blockchain has taken the whole scenario to the next level.

What do E-commerce platforms and therefore brands need as much as customer spend?

The answer to that question is data and well #GDPR has just come along and tossed it all upside down. With adversity comes opportunity to innovate and the Blockchain companies out there are revolutionising personal commerce in a totally new way.

By now, you have probably received hundreds of emails (or at least 20) from various companies that you had possibly forgotten you had signed up to, sending you double opt-in emails so that they can still send you marketing emails. The problem is as I see, what happens if you didn't opt-in to that company in the first place? What if they purchased your data and you never signed up? Does that leave a legal precedent to go to court over misappropriation of personal information under GDPR? Just a thought!

But coming back to my point, which is the right to be forgotten under GDPR, has given rise to the new brand of personal commerce.

Blockchain takes over personal commerce

Companies like Peazzy, Recheck, Shopin are more focused on giving ownership of data back to the person and then rewarding them with tokens and in some cases cash for sharing their data with brands. The more you share the more you earn.

The ambition is to get you to de-list from as many traditional brand lists as possible then let these platforms broker your data on your behalf allowing you to control who knows what about you for marketing purposes. This makes sense on a number of levels as we live a long life, spending a lot of money and time making decisions which ultimately affect the profitability of these E-commerce companies and whilst we don't mind this, we could also be getting more for what we do, after all, in this case time is money.

Will the companies fight back?

This is the question that I have also pondered and I think that they may do, but more likely is that they will simply buy the technology and play both sides of the fence, that unfortunately is the opportunity that fintech and blockchain presents to companies that haven't or are too big to adopt the technology, but a bonus for the blockchain company owners.

Whatever happens I am a massive advocate of further development in these areas and if you are, Recheck are not going to ICO and are still taking investment during their growth stages so please reach out if this is something you believe in.

I hope you are all as excited as me about the opportunity that blockchain is presenting in data control and personal commerce and seek to further educate yourselves in what's going on.

I'm Paul Sullivan, Fintech Marketing Expert with a passion for all things Fintech related including Blockchain, Instech as well as Medtech and Proptech. I am a speaker on the international stage on Blockchain and I help grow companies in this space through business and product development, marketing, ICO advisory and fund raising. Find us at www.paulsullivanmarketing.com