Eftpos reveals plans to power Australian smart cities with blockchain tech

Australia’s leading point-of-sale technology provider Eftpos Australia has revealed ambitious plans to roll out blockchain-powered autonomous vehicles and smart cities in Australia built using Hedera’s Hashgraph.

Speaking on Tuesday as part of the Australian Blockchain Week, Robert Allen, deputy chair of Blockchain Australia and Eftpos’ entrepreneur in residence, discussed the firm’s intention to use distributed ledger technology for advanced infrastructure, among other applications:

“We’re going to be looking at smart cities. […] We’re going to be looking at autonomous vehicles and things that we haven’t even thought about yet. All of this needs new infrastructure, and Eftpos needs to be informed by that.”

Eftpos chief investment officer Ben Tabell noted the significance of the firm’s DLT initiatives in partnership with Hedera, highlighting the firms’ efforts to combine digital identity and payments solutions in Australia.

“This is a big part of our work and effort at the moment to bring in digital identity and transactions so that we can securely support payments and other transaction clubs in the Australian digital ecosystem,” he said.

Eftpos Australia first announced a proof-of-concept for an Australian stablecoin using Hedera’s Hashgraph in July 2020. While the pilot focused on micropayments, such as real-time payments for streaming and pay-per-click content, Allen noted the trial laid the groundwork for more ambitious initiatives:

“Hedera is the only next-generation network that will support those kinds of use cases. So, we wanted to test it, and it has operated beautifully. […] Now, because we’ve got all this digital strategy, we are in a position where we can start looking at ways that problems can be solved in a way which is maybe nontraditional and more distributed.”

In January, Eftpos became Hedera’s 17th governing council member and Australia’s first Hedera node operator.

Hedera has been expanding its governing council recently, with Shinhan Bank joining earlier this month, French utility giant Electricite de France onboarding in March, and Standard Bank Group becoming the network’s first African node operator in February.