Alibaba Subsidiaries Provide Blockchain-Powered Solutions to Ease Coronavirus Panic
- Business and local governments are working together to reduce the coronavirus epidemic with Alibaba playing the main role.
- Many employees are encouraged to work from home as there is a risk that the epidemic may spread again after March 17.
Illustration from Freepik
The number of Coronavirus patients is still increasing which catalyzes global panic. Companies need to find ways to conduct business despite the fear holding the population and subsidiaries of Alibaba announced on February 15 that they will provide solutions for this problem. Such solutions are online “contactless bidding” features that are powered by blockchain.
The initiative has been reported by various financial media outlets in China who communicated that Alibaba’s electronic payment platform – Alipay is part of the common drive. Alipay’s part in the project will be to provide blockchain technology for online bidding apps, which can be used in a ‘contactless’ way by users.
Some of the other Alibaba subsidiaries, which will use blockchain technology to assist the business in the country, are support solutions provider Dingding and Alibaba Cloud. All of them believe that contactless blockchain-based payment solutions might be the way to ensure that business in China will not stop completely.
The food-delivery chain that was bought by Alibaba in April 2018 – Ele.me will also adopt contactless blockchain-based payment services.
All these remote work-related tech solutions will be also used by companies to monitor the health status and means of transport (train and airplane) of their employees. The technology will be also implemented for a solution that allows companies to request permission from the local governments to reopen their business.
The Lunar New Year holiday was originally intended from January 24 to 30 but was extended to February 2nd due to the coronavirus epidemic. Some of the big cities like Shanghai and Beijing even offered companies to continue their operations on March 10th.
Most Chinese companies resumed work around February 16 but due to the coronavirus, they are still encouraged to let their employees work from their homes. To help this endeavor, Alibaba Cloud is expanding the capacity of their infrastructure and is granting free remote access to their solutions to be used by approximately 10 million companies that need it.
The epidemic outside of the Hubei Province has been stopped for now but there are big concerns that once all corporate activities resume on March 17, the virus may start spreading again.
- As several countries have already entered the second period of lockdown, many parts of the world are bracing for a long winter of isolation.
- How will this affect crypto markets this time around, and how will it differ from the first lockdown?
Illustration from Freepik
- Binance Charity’s “Crypto Against COVID” initiative was able to collect $4.3 million in crypto donations, which were used to purchase more than 1.5 million PPEs.
- The firm also used blockchain technology to make its process transparent, enabling donors to check up on their donations, and for what they were used.
- The new IBM app, called Digital Health Pass, will be able to use multiple data types to generate an individual’s pass.
- The pass puts privacy first, allowing its users to control the amount of data that is being shared with others.