Patent application reveals that a Walmart Coin could be in the works

Walmart is looking into its own US dollar-backed digital currency, along the same lines of Facebook’s much hyped Libra project.

A patent application outlines a method for “generating one digital currency unit by tying the one digital currency unit to a regular currency; storing information of the one digital currency unit into a block of a blockchain; buying or paying the one digital currency unit”.

The stablecoin could benefit those with limited access to banking services, one of Libra’s big selling points. “Using a digital currency, low-income households that find banking expensive, may have an alternative way to handle wealth at an institution that can supply the majority of their day-to-day financial and product needs,” Walmart states.

Users’ purchasing histories could be stored on the blockchain, with related savings applied to subsequent purchases in a similar way to loyalty programmes. Other features include the ability to remove the need for credit cards, and acting as a “pre-approved biometric (e.g., fingerprint or eye pattern) credit…A person is the ‘credit card’ to their own digital value bank”.