Mastercard has announced a collaboration with blockchain company GrainChain to track goods as they move along the supply chain.
According to an Oct. 29 announcement, Mastercard and GrainChain will jointly trace more than 24 different commodities across Latin and North America as part of the “Mastercard Provenance Solution” service. The system will use the payment processor’s own permissioned blockchain. Senior vice president of innovation and startup engagement at Mastercard Deborah Barta said:
“The traceability market is a global industry, and the digital identity of products and goods is even more critical today as consumers, brands and governments demand to know where products and services are from.”
The new service aims to provide end-to-end tracking of the goods as they move throughout the supply chain, enabling forensic commodity tracking from raw materials to harvesting, processing, logistics and delivery to the final consumer. This, in turn, should allow brands and producers to better protect their reputation, business efficiency and bottom line while also protecting consumers. :
“With Mastercard Provenance Solution, we’re focused on helping parties benefit from reliable data, which brings efficiencies throughout supply chains, ultimately helping to protect consumers,” Barta said, adding:
With our first partnership in Central America, the collaboration with GrainChain demonstrates our ability to scale globally and transform supply chains across new industries.”
Supply chain tracking approaches critical mass
Announcements concerning blockchain use in supply chain tracking hit the news increasingly often. As Modern Consensus reported a week ago, aerospace marketplace VeriTX recently illustrated how the firm intends to use the Algorand (ALGO) blockchain to track airplane components as they are delivered to its customers.
Automakers also increasingly adopt such systems. In early September Renault launched a blockchain project that certifies the regulatory compliance of vehicle components and subcomponents—all the way through from the design to the production phase.
On the last day of March, BMW also announced that it is scaling-up its blockchain supply chain tracking pilot to ensure the raw materials and components that the company uses are fully traceable.
