The blockchain is being used to upgrade, DubaiPay, payment portal of the Dubai Government. This came as a good news, as it enabled instant processing of payments without any government charges levied on it.
Dubai’s Smart Dubai Office (SDO) launched the project. Furthermore, a creative partnership took place in the project with Dubai’s Department of Finance. Also, it was titled as “Payment Reconciliation and Settlement” system, aiming to be a decentralized upgrade to its payment system.
The need for a Blockchain solution
Dubai’s Department of Finance used to rely completely on manual labor. The staff used to manually settle all the payments. Deducation of the transaction fees takes place before that. The concerned authority gets the tranferred amount from the rest of the payment after that. The process was slow, taking up to 45 days to complete it.
The decentralized technology immensely reduces human efforts and time. Furthermore, It provides accurate real-time payments, without levying any transaction fees.
Furthermore, Her Excellency Dr. Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, Director General of the Smart Dubai Office (SDO) stated, “Smart technologies continue to infiltrate every aspect of human life and societies; virtually everything we do today relies fully or to some degree on an advanced technology once considered ‘disruptive’.”
Furthermore, they added that “Guided by the forward-thinking vision of its leadership, Dubai has long been a trailblazer in embracing avant-garde technologies – most notably those of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – and tailoring them to meet the needs of our citizens, residents and visitors, in a bid to transform Dubai into the happiest and smartest city in the world.”
The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) and the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) became the first Dubai government departments to use the project.
Reportedly, both the government agencies have already processed a total of 5 million transactions already.