By 
Jan 30, 2018
0 Comments
Part one of this post discussed elaborately the objective of Request Network, and its position as a potential platform for investors. If you missed it, you can read it here. This post continues to shed light on the benefits of embracing a network that is poised to disrupt the monopoly of financial service providers.
Superior Payments Options and Modularity
Another advantage that Request Network has over the traditional system is the additional platform, which allows you to create advanced payment conditions. This enhances flexibility and innovation in investments. In addition, the platform can integrate with additional layers and smart contracts to computerize personal and corporate finances.
What’s more, Request recognizes the unique diversity in needs and operations of companies. This enables it to provide suitable functionalities to meet their unique operations. The Network is versatile and companies are able to customize their operations but continue to gain access to all basic services and frameworks. With that arrangement, organizations and companies can use the services easily, while remaining open to creating new frameworks and functionalities as and where necessary.
Use cases and extra benefits
Apart from the ability to facilitate instant and cheap cross-currency settlements, Request Network offers a wide range of use cases. For instance, the system provides the following:
- Automates real-time global accounting
- Eliminates manual tax collection
- Replaces the audit of an entire branch
- Simplifies international payments
- Machines can communicate on the same financial field
- Replaces mainstream financial service providers such as PayPal
- Advanced payment terms are available to anyone
Here is a breakdown of the areas mentioned:
Cross –currency settlements
The Request Network whitepaper reveals, “a built-in inter-currency settlement system within Request that allows the seller to receive the currency he needs while the payer pays with the currency he has.”
This implies that in the future, it will be possible and easier for all platforms including companies and projects to transact and interact without the need to convert currency or to buy each other’s coins. For instance, company X would like to pay for the services provided to them by company Y. In this situation, company X would not have to buy company Y tokens. Instead, it would just pay in the currency of their choice, whether it is fiat, bitcoin, ETH, or others. On the receiving end, company Y would also receive the payment in the currency of their choice. The exchange is automatic and nearly instant.
This, in the end, will lead to a huge demand for the Request tokens in future, as many people would engage in cross-currency transactions either for personal or for business reasons. Participants would be able to make instant transactions without limitations, and each party would use the Request token as an intermediary.
B2B Invoicing
The Request Network seeks to address the gap that currently exists in the invoicing system. Even in the face of rising technology, many companies and merchants continue to grapple with paper and e-mail format invoices with countless errors and omissions. To that end, Request Network aims to provide direct access to bills through the ledger where near instant updates and automated accounting take place. Besides, the network seeks to provide the following solutions to free users from the monopoly of payment facilitators:
- Reputation system: this will lead to timely payments.
- Validation: this refers to instant sending of requests and immediate notification to the recipient. You will know immediately when the recipient validates the request.
- Escrow and down payment: you will be able to include extra payment options and functionality.
- Invoice management: there will be easy management of customer invoices through applications with easy compilation and access, instead of using email to do the same
- Sharing through a ledger: you will be able to update your books immediately you receive payments and invoices. This will solve the problem of invoice duplication, less time for proper management, and the risk of invoice loss.
- A connection between sales invoices and payments: with the Request Network, the invoice is the transaction. This is different from the current system where the invoicing software is separate from the payment of customer services.
Accounting and Auditing Automation
As far as bookkeeping goes, Request will provide an automatic and timely accounting solution with more information and a summary of finances. This will allow for better, faster, and cheaper financial management. Besides, the network could also allow for digitized accounting solutions to erase the need for double documentation checks and constant updates and filing. This will lead to an improved and efficient budget allocation by companies to value-added tasks in the areas of marketing, analysis, expansions, strategies, partnerships and many more.
In addition, automation and efficiency of the network will remove the need for an expensive auditing. Users will be able to keep their accounts in a confidential and decentralized platform, which requires limited oversight for verification. In the traditional system, auditing requires an auditor to examine manually all the accounting books including terms or sale and journal entries.
For bigger companies, there could be hundreds of transactions to inspect, which could take a significant amount of time. Eventually, the entire exercise turns out to be costly for both the company and the auditor in terms of time and resources. Request Network seeks to solve this problem by including all the information in one place. Besides, the network provides extra assurance and automation services to reduce the time and financial cost involved in this area.
Economic Infrastructure
By integrating a decentralized platform for payment, invoicing, and auditing, the Request Network will enable government agencies and authorities to detect financial instabilities, money-laundering, fraud, and other financial crimes early enough and to act based on the observations.
Contrary to the notion that cryptocurrency operates free from government intervention the network gives room for government agencies to participate in its operations in some form or shape. In order to facilitate economic efficiency, both parties must find a way of working together, allowing compromises, and agreements along the way.
Government agencies will be one of the beneficiaries of the Request Network by allowing a suitable platform for accounting activities related to taxes and social responsibilities. Through the network, the government will be able to control and prevent illicit activities.
Community Hub
The Request Network has set aside 30 million US dollars to fund the development in addition to the Request Protocol. This is according to their update on January 19, 2018. This initiative will allow the developers to have a community of developers working on top of the core, a system similar to NEO or Ethereum. The Request hub will expand the scope of the project and initiate rapid scalability, adoption, and efficiency.
In simple terms, the Request Network will operate in a similar way to iOS, in which unassociated developers take part in producing several applications. However, in addition to providing the opportunity to create more apps on top of their core protocol, the network has set aside a 30-million dollar incentive to help jump-start such ambitious and beneficial projects.
The platform is open for developers to create apps or decentralized apps, which eventually leads to mainstream adoption and scalability. Besides, it creates room for Request developers to focus on the success of the core protocol while the independent developers can concentrate on the development of various apps, websites, plugins, widgets, and buttons that are compatible with the protocol.
Critical Considerations
In spite of the benefits that Request seeks to achieve, the journey is far from over. The following are some of the critical observations to make as far as the success of the network goes.
Competition
While it can prove that it is superior to its competitors, the network is still at the earlier stages of development when compared to the mainstream providers. Besides, it will not be easy to turn things around for organizations that have been in the business for decades. Even with proven benefits, the competitors will not surrender quite easily.
On the other hand, the blockchain technology is already on the checklist of the competitors. Mainstream financial service providers such as Visa is already hiring and deploying more blockchain developers. This implies that such companies will strive to remain competitive and relevant to the market.
All the same, even with the biggest competition to overcome, Request embraces countless benefits to assure its users of something better, especially when it comes to decentralization with extra perks.
Scaling
Another area of concern is scaling, given the decision of Request Network to use Ethereum as its preferred platform. With that in mind, Ethereum currently has bugs with its smart contracts as well as scalability issues. While Request can overcome this problem by moving to a different platform from Ethereum, it will still hinder development and growth that the network anticipates.
Even so, there are good reasons to remain hopeful with regard to this concern. Ethereum is a leading network in blockchain development and will do everything to ensure it has a scalable platform. Recent developments on the platform such as Casper and sharding are a step in the right direction to ensure scalability on the Ethereum platform. At the initial stages of cryptocurrency development, there are enough reasons to believe that scalability will mature with time.
Final Thoughts
Request Network is undeniably impressive and seeks to offer a solution to notable problems in personal and corporate finances. However, the fight is easy as it rises against powerhouses that have been in the business for decades. However, with a viable use case in the financial sector, a highly anticipated roadmap, and inspiring support, Request Network can steal the race in 2018 and deliver on their goals and promises before the competition can adapt to the changes in the financial sector. You can find out more about the network on their blog.
Images courtesy of Request Network
Join the conversation over at Telegram (https://t.me/coinstaker)
