Fraud impacts organizations of all types and sizes across a wide range of industries and geographies. Consequences can be direct, through financial losses, or indirect, through fines and reputational fallout. In 2018, firms worldwide lost more than $7 billion to internal fraud schemes, according to a “2018 Report to Nations,” by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) — which analysed 2,600 real cases of occupational fraud from companies across 125 territories and 23 industries. Addressing the risk of fraud is a key challenge for all organizations.
Blockchain is an anti-fraud technology by design. The essence of blockchain technology is a shared and tamper-proof record of activities that are time-stamped and verified by a distributed network of computers. This provides a near real-time audit trail of information being exchanged. So, even if fraudulent information is recorded on a blockchain, there is a simple way to identify and tag the associated transactions.