North America or Europe are usually in the spotlight as far as blockchain adoption is concerned. However, the Middle East is really one of the regions taking the lead in adopting the technology. The head of BSV hub for the Middle East and South Asia, Muhammad Salman Anjum, took the stage of CoinGeek New York Conference to talk about how BSV is rising to the top in the region.
CoinGeek Backstage reporter Patrick Thompson interviewed Anjum on the sidelines of the event to discuss how the Middle East is becoming a tech hub for BSV enterprise blockchain, the government’s blockchain strategy, the latest updates with Invoicemate, and more.
Whenever there is news about blockchain or digital currency, the private sector has been the one taking the initiative in adopting the technology, and governments are barely moving to even regulate the industry. However, it’s different news in United Arab Emirates (UAE) since the government prioritizes blockchain adoption. Anjum said the BSV hub for the Middle East and South Asia has been rolling out training programs for the country’s ministry of HR and Emiratisation, and they are also collaborating with the leading universities in the region.
“A lot has happened, and [more] will be happening in coming months. Very recently, we have transformed the first blockchain implementation for a government organization in South Asia. We have rolled out some training programs for the ministry of HR and Emiratisation in the UAE. We are now in collaboration with the University of Sharjah, the leading university in the Middle East. We are putting together an R&D project [to put] the credentials of their education certificates plus their validation and, most importantly, the equivalency between them and other universities on BSV blockchain. We are also doing a rollout of a training program for developers with the help of the University of Karachi, again the leading university in Pakistan,” Anjum said.
Thompson further asked how the government is warming up to the idea of blockchain technology.
“First we orient them, [we] make them aware with the ROI—the return on investment—on their efforts [and] their additional expenditures for blockchain that eventually it is going to give them benefit with the trusted workflows. [And] the benefit with the digital transformation initiatives, automation, and so on. [Then] we help them in choosing the right use case and in implementing that right use case in a right manner,” Anjum stated.
Apart from heading the BSV hub for the Middle East and South Asia, Anjum is also the Chief Mate of InvoiceMate, the world’s first blockchain-based invoice management system. Thompson asked Anjum regarding their latest movement with the company.
“We are implementing Invoicemate for three of our clients. One Saudi government entity, a couple of other large-scale manufacturers, and soon it’s going to be implemented in our own ecosystem as well. This is a step forward in taking BSV into an application area, rather than just the protocol area. So again, this is a huge progress. The last time we talked about InvoiceMate [it is just] a potential application. Now it’s [an] actual application on BSV blockchain,” Anjum said.
Anjum also shared why he and his team chose to work with invoices. He noted that they started as a document management system. However, they later figured out that it’s a “very generic use case” and started working on research and development instead.
“We identified that invoice is [the] most commonly used document. It is used by smaller businesses, medium-sized businesses, large-sized businesses, [the] public sector, [and the] private sector. Then there are numerous pain points with this invoicing system. Not to mention that it’s not just the workflow it’s fraud resilient. They need workflow automation, [and] they need access to the liquidity as well for invoice financing. And that’s where we are heading after providing them the automation platform…That’s going to be soon part of InvoiceMate invoice financing hub,” he said.
Anjum also revealed that they plan to do monthly meetups to have more in-depth community engagements and introduce startups to the BSV blockchain ecosystem.
To wrap up the interview, Anjum encouraged the viewers to start using the BSV blockchain and InvoiceMate. “You need to solve the problems with the blockchain, and [the] BSV ecosystem is something which you are getting real solutions for the real problems. We are not coming up with futuristic problem-solving. Its approach [is] to solve the current day’s problems,” he concluded.
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Watch: CoinGeek New York presentation, Increasing Footprints of BSV Blockchain in Middle East & South Asia
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