According to Wang Zhongmin, China’s vice-chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund (NCSSF), the country will use blockchain technology to issue Social Security payments.

Several Large Collaboratives to Help Implement Blockchain to China’s Social Security Fund

News publication China Daily has reported that China will use a form of distributed ledger technology to facilitate faster payments and lower transactional costs. The Daily, when reporting the news, cited the blockchain’s ability “to carry out direct transactions without using an intermediary,” which provides a tamper-proof record of information.

In 2015, the NCSSF managed 1.9 trillion yuan, and said the number had been increasing 24 percent every year.

Axel Lehmann, chief operating officer for UBS Group, says there will be “several significant large collaborative efforts” as part of this announcement.

Lehmann states to China Daily:

To realize the full potential of blockchains, we will above all need to collaborate on a common platform. At UBS, we think it is essential that the industry avoid a standards war of the type that has bedeviled the adoption of new technologies in the past.

Currently, China’s leading blockchain collaboratives are on the forefront of researching and developing this technology. Organizations, such as the China Ledger Alliance and Wanxiang Blockchain Labs, help address the needs of existing business platforms, working with regulatory policy, and setting distributed ledger standards within the country.

The R3 CEV consortium is also making moves within China’s borders. Well-known financial institutions, such as China Merchants Bank, have recently partnered with the consortium. Wang Zhongmin believes the NCSSF will most definitely adopt a distributed ledger platform for the country’s social security system.

“There’s no doubt that blockchain technology will be used in the social security system,” Zhongmin explains, “because of its valuable applications in the investment and management of social security funds.”

Blockchain Popularity Continues to Rise in China

With so much emphasis on blockchain research and development from groups like the China Ledger Alliance, Wanxiang, and the Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium, government entities will look to enhance their services with this new technology. The country’s central bank has also been considering the possibility of issuing its own cryptocurrency in the midst of the region’s blockchain hype.

The announcement from the vice-chairman of the NCSSF just further shows that distributed ledger technology is a scorching topic in China.