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Mastercard Blockchain to Trace Produce for the Largest American Food Group

Mastercard is collaborating with Envisible, a supply-chain company, to allow the traceability of the origin of food products via Mastercard’s blockchain-based Provenance Solution.

With over 100 blockchain patents filed globally, Mastercard has ranked in the top 3 among top blockchain innovators. Mastercard’s Provenance Solution is industry-agnostic and allows brands to provide record product journeys to contribute to consumer confidence, trust, and awareness. The Provenance Solution also provides governance capabilities for supply chain networks.

Leading US retail food group, Topco Associates LLC will be testing Envisible’s Wholechain traceability system to allow the traceability of produce, meat, and seafood.

Dan Glei, Executive Vice President of Merchandising and Marketing of Food City, under the Topco corporation said: “Using Envisible Wholechain, powered by Mastercard, our grocers will be able to stock shelves with confidence and also be able to pinpoint issues in the food chain during any unfortunate events such as recalls.”

Mark Kaplan, Partner at Envisible, stated that the sheer volume of global trade makes it difficult to ensure the journey and authenticity of the food.

He added: “We’re excited that Mastercard shares our vision and is driving consumer trust by bringing its significant expertise in using technology at scale with commercial-grade processing speeds, data flexibility and privacy, and security standards to an area that has previously been considerably opaque.”

Image via Shutterstock

Nestle Partners with Carrefour To Track Origin of Baby Milk Products Using Blockchain

According to the latest report, drinks and food giant Nestle has partnered with French supermarket chain Carrefour. Such a partnership aims to track the supply chain of baby milk products using blockchain.

By using blockchain, the firms intend to advance the confidence of consumers in the quality of products by ensuring more transparency in the entire supply chain of baby milk products.

Adopting blockchain to track supply chain

The firms utilize IBM Food trust’s technical solution that runs on the Hyperledger

Fabric blockchain framework. The use of the blockchain platform is reported to offer increased transparency on checks and origins of baby milk products across the supermarket chain stores in France.

The blockchain platform is now live at Carrefour stores across France. Using IBM’s solution, customers will be able to access nutritional and other information regarding baby milk products by scanning a QR code via their smartphones.

Nowadays, several companies emphasize on food traceability as consumers are becoming more aware of the products they consume. Consumers want to know that the ingredients used are sustainably and ethically sourced.

Carrefour said, in a media announcement, that the application of blockchain creates transparency across the supply chain. This, therefore, enables the brand and consumers to build trust. Carrefour also mentioned that using blockchain highlights the know-how, expertise, and care taken to ensure the quality of the baby nutrition products is maintained.

As a component of its Act for Food program, the giant supermarket has committed to the extensive use of blockchain to its product lines. Carrefour has made this move to guarantee consumers complete transparency concerning the channels through which products have passed.

Nature of the joint partnership

A new three-way partnership is created to build transparency for all within the food industry.

Baby milk products manufactured by Laboratoires Guigoz – the French unit of Nestle – now can be tracked using blockchain across all the retailers.

Based on the partnership, Carrefour will lend its expertise as a blockchain adopter whereas Nestle will share production and supply chain data for Laboratoires Guigoz’s milk products.

Based on its role, Laboratoires Guigoz is once again proud to strengthen its close ties with consumers.

While Nestle is a founding member of the IBM Food Trust consortium, Carrefour joined the consortium soon afterward.

However, the two giant retailers are not new to using blockchain within their internal operations. In April 2019, Nestle and Carrefour started to apply IBM’s blockchain to trace the supply chain process of Mousline – a famous brand company of instant mashed potatoes.

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South African Supermarket Chain Pick n Pay Starts Accepting Bitcoin Payments

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Pick n Pay, a major supermarket chain in South Africa, announced on Tuesday that it now accepts Bitcoin as payments in its online store, according to a local media report.

Customers can now pay with Bitcoin (BTC) using any Lightning Network-enabled app, such as BlueWallet or Muun, to buy groceries, hygiene products, household supplies, and many other products offered in the supermarket. The Lightning Network is a layer 2 solution built on the Bitcoin blockchain. It speeds up transactions while making it cheaper than the main Bitcoin network, making it more appealing to business enterprises.

Pick n Pay said it tested the payment method in 10 stores over the past five months, and it is now available in 39 stores across the nation. The supermarket plans to roll out the payment method to the rest of its stores all over the country in the coming months, per the report.

In a statement, a spokesperson from Pick n Pay described Bitcoin transactions as easy and secure, just like swiping debit or credit cards, and much more affordable. “Customers scan a QR code from the app and accept the rand conversion rate on their smartphone at the time of the transaction,” the representative narrated in the report.

South Africa remains one of the major regions with healthy cryptocurrency usage in Africa. There is a rising popularity of crypto, especially Bitcoin, in the nation. This is due to higher exposure among the people as the country records over six million people with cryptocurrency exposure.

South Africa ranks eighth worldwide in terms of crypto ownership among the public – 7.1% of its population owned digital currency as of 2021, more than in Britain or Brazil – according to the United Nations trade agency. Crypto ownership is also widespread in Kenya and Nigeria among African countries.

Many South Africa’s young people are getting involved in the hopes of making money, despite authorities and financial experts warning about the dangers of fraud, massive losses, and mental anguish.

Last month, South Africa declared crypto assets as a financial product as part of efforts to bring digital assets more under the purview of local authorities and to make it easier for regulators to monitor the market and help to safeguard consumers.