BlockBill : The Blockchain-Powered Paperless Billing Solution 1 . Cost
For small-time vendors , especially those with limited resources , our solution might seem expensive and require significant financial investment , which can be a possible barrier for adoption . Often with digital transformation tech , these costs are due to initial costs for hardware , software , and learning / training .
Our solution requires users ( both sellers and buyers ) to have access to a smartphone / PC with Internet access . As per world bank statistics [ 27 ], the number of smartphones in active usage is encouraging , with only a handful of countries lacking the necessary threshold . Regarding internet access , about twenty countries have sub-threshold access to the Internet [ 28 ]. By deploying our solution on the cloud , these costs are within affordable limits .
Wherever these costs are above the spending threshold , we plan to seek funding from the agencies such as World Bank , ADB , IMF , etc . With such support , the solution can reach every country . We have also conducted a per-transaction cost analysis that supports our product and will provide a helping hand in convincing users to onboard . This is explained below .
For a small vendor in India , the costs associated with having a Paper-Based Billing system involve two major expenses : Thermal Paper Billing Machine and the Thermal Paper Refills for the machine . The price of a typical Billing Machine in India can range from Indian Rupees ( Rs .) 10000 to Rs . 20000 . A single roll of thermal paper refill costs around Rs . 40 lasts for approximately 170 transactions . Thus the total amounts to around Rs . 15000 + Rs 0.25 per transaction . This is an estimate not considering the associated maintenance costs .
On the other hand , we don ’ t need Thermal Paper Machines or Refills for our product . Functions on NEAR Smart Contracts can be characterized into two types : View functions and Call functions . No charge is incurred for all the features that call “ View Functions ” underneath .
Since approximately 100 characters can be stored on the blockchain upon adding a new bill , it will consume around 6.75 TGas , which is 0.675 milliNEAR spent as Gas Fee . At present , 1 Near is around $ 2.23 . So translating to rupees , the cost borne by a vendor is around Rs . 0.12 per transaction .
This concludes that , apart from the one-time cost of Rs . 15000 for a paper billing machine , a vendor spends twice the amount for a single transaction in paper-based systems than in our system .
2 . Resistance to Change
For small and large organizations , we anticipate some inertia in adopting new disruptive technologies , especially as it requires changes to existing processes or ways of working . But with our product ' s value proposition , these operational issues can be addressed with sufficient marketing .
Journal of Innovation 107