IKEA sells goods for government licensed electronic money

The Icelandic department of furniture company IKEA has sold goods to local retailer Nordic Store using government licensed electronic money. The transaction took place on a platform build on the Ethereum blockchain. It's made by supply chain management firm Tradeshift and used tokenized Icelandic krona. Tradeshift announced this latest development on earlier this week.

The tokenized krona are regulated by the Icelandic government. It's basically programmable digital cash. A company called Monerium made it. They have a license to provide fiat payment services over blockchain systems. As a result they can do this all over Europe.

“With a ‘smart invoice’ we can issue tokens that represent the future cash flow down to each dollar on the invoice. Whoever holds tokens will get paid upon due date, which makes smart invoices ideal to use for financial-services apps.”

Gert Sylvest, co-founder of Tradeshift, press release (October 1st 2019)

Keep in mind, we are talking about electronic money and smart contracts. Therefore we're not talking about bitcoin, XRP or other cryptocurrencies.

Still props to IKEA though, for being innovative with something like electronic money. For example, earlier this year the company was working on the idea of a complete self-sustaining village. All houses would have solar panels. A blockchain network would take care of energy distribution and the exchange of money, all based on smart contracts.

Blockchain as a business solution

These smart contracts combine money flows with supply. As a result companies can become much more efficient. On top of that the system by Monerium basically combines the invoicing, the money transfer and the inventory into one system.

At the moment IKEA believes this to be a solution for commercial deals between two companies. They don't have the intention to bring crypto or e-money payments to the public.

Monerium and Tradeshift are names to watch

This transaction for Nordic Goods and IKEA is just the first. Monerium and Tradeshift have big plans to move into Europe. For example Monerium wants to accelerate cross-border payments for businesses with its e-money solution. In addition Tradeshift wants to digitize its financial supply chain in 190 countries.

In May this year Tradeshift already made headlines. The company had received a $250 million investment. As a result investors valued the firm at 1.1 billion dollars. This investment made sure that the company is now making a deeper move into the blockchain industry.