Mastercard announces collaboration to bring Blockchain to Food Supply Chain

Mastercard is now collaborating with the Envisible, a company working to bring visibility to the global food systems, to bring the blockchain benefit, to the food supply chain.

Mastercard announced that it would be integrating the Envisible Wholechain system to bring traceability to the food supply chain.

Mastercard's blockchain-based Provenance Solution will empower Envisible’s Wholechain traceability system. The Topco Associated Limited, a leader in the food industry sector operating within the US, will use Envisible's Wholechain supply traceability system. It will help its supermarket owners trace and highlight the origin of seafood.

According to the announcement, the new initiative will enable the food companies to reduce their annual costs by millions, as has been seen with the shipping industries and financial sector.

Executive Opinion

Senior vice president, Innovation and Startup Engagement, Mastercard, Deborah Barta, said, “The identity of things is becoming even more important as consumers raise demands for transparency. Our provenance solution leverages Mastercard’s established network capabilities, globally-scaled technology, and services, such as payments and counterfeit programs. This allows us to deliver trust, financial inclusion, and back-end efficiencies to the marketplace.”

Partner at Envisible, Mark Kaplan, said, “The sheer volume of global trade makes it difficult to track the journey and authenticity of the food. 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.”

The importance of a streamlined food supply chain

Since food is perishable merchandise, it's imperative that the supply chain is in direct sync with each entity involved in the operation.

With the blockchain technology, it allows the companies to track products delivery in the real-time scenario. The supply chains can also make educated decisions to ease the passing of the products from one location to the next.

The main idea of using blockchain technology to monitor food supply is not new. Moreover, just last year, a Wyoming (a western U.S. state) senator started with a blockchain project that would help to offer Authenticity regarding the provenance of cattle.