China’s Zheshang Bank has been ahead of the pack when it comes to blockchain. Last week it was disclosed it is running a blockchain system targeted at enterprises to make it faster and easier to reimburse staff for expense claims.
The bank was one of the first to go live with blockchain for trade finance when it created Zheshang Chain in 2017. More than two years ago, it securitized some of those assets by issuing a loan note backed by assets on Zheshang Chain.
And it hasn’t stopped. In June, it issued asset-backed commercial paper using blockchain.
Coming back to the expense reimbursement solution, “Extremely Simplified Reimbursements” does quite a few things. First of all, sellers can provide invoices electronically and blockchain makes it easier to validate that the invoice is genuine and payment was made to the seller. Permissioning enables the payment data to be confidentially shared with the enterprise.
The app also enables staff to use corporate accounts, most of which are paid directly by their employer. We’re unclear whether blockchain plays an important role for that functionality, other than perhaps verifying it was indeed the employee that consumed the service.
When using the app, staff can choose from several categories of expenses, including travel by train or car, online shopping, and meals. Many services are integrated with the app to order meals or taxis directly, and hence all the details are logged.
According to a report in Sina.com, the app has already been used by hundreds of thousands of individual users. It’s also been around for a while, as we found reviews in Apple’s appstore dating back to January 2019. Despite Sina’s positive report, the app wasn’t rated too highly within the appstore. The one-star ratings narrowly outstripped the five-star ratings and some users said it had poor usability.
