BlockBill : The Blockchain-Powered Paperless Billing Solution
Every second , across the globe , millions of receipts get printed and / or stored digitally . A receipt is a written / printed acknowledgement from the seller to the buyer of the received payment for a good or service . Most , if not all , of these receipts are printed on thermal paper ; while a few get printed on non-thermal paper .
Recently , digital receipt systems , which involve electronic versions of traditional paper-receipts , have also gained popularity because of certain advantages , such as receipts can be easily stored on computers or smartphones and are accessible on demand . Figure 1-1 shows a queue-line at the till of a shop , to the left is a scenario where a buyer is receiving a paper-based bill , while to the right is blockchain-based paper-free billing system in action .
Figure 1-1 : Billing systems : The traditional paper version vs the digital blockchain version .
Thermal paper and traditional paper usage have devastating environmental and health impacts [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ], while digital receipts risk tampering and trust issues [ 4 ]. In this work , we propose a paperless digital receipt solution which is environmentally sustainable , tamper-free , and trustful based on a systematic application of Blockchain technology .
The MVP ( Minimum Viable Product ), on both web and android platforms , of this billing system , called BlockBill , has been submitted to the “ 8th Global Best M-Gov Award ” competition at the “ World Government Summit 2023 , where we bagged the first position globally among submissions from around 60 countries [ 20 ], [ 21 ], [ 22 ].
This solution is valid for both Business-to-Consumer ( B2C ) and Business-to-Business ( B2B ) transactions . However , in this article , we present our implementation for all Retail and Wholesale
Journal of Innovation 91