Australia’s NDIS Conducts Trials To Use Blockchain Based Smart Money

By Rishma Banerjee

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), is a scheme through which Australian citizens with any intellectual, physical, sensory and psycho-social disability receives support of all sorts. The Australian Federal Government now is testing a blockchain application to look into how it can be used to make “smart money” for the scheme. The trail which is being called “Making Money Smart” has been developed by Austalia’s federal science agency- the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and One of their “big four” retail banks- the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

An announcement on Tuesday declared that this trial was aiming to create smart money which would hopefully enable participants and service providers to process payments conditionally. The prototype ideally is to ensure that citizens can use their disability insurance plans without any paperwork or receipts.

CSIRO, who has dabbled in the ambit of developing blockchain solutions,  has led an association for the development of a nationwide blockchain platform and has had a global trial of it “Red Belly Blockchain” provides explanations as to why the NDIS was selected to be the first case study for the prototype. “It involves highly personalised payment conditions. In the NDIS, participants have individualised plans that can contain multiple budget categories – each with different spending rules.” clarified CSIRO

The smart money is also being designed to be incorporated into Australia’s  New Payments Platform, a national payments scheme that allows real-time low-value payments.

“This has been a really interesting research project into how blockchain technology can integrate with new payments technologies to provide more choice, control and flexibility for conditional payments for NDIS participants and service providers.”

The prototype has already gone through rounds of feedback from the government and other stakeholders of the interview, while the app is currently being tested by the users and the service providers of the NDIS scheme.

A senior principal researcher at CSIRO’s software and computational systems program, Dr Mark Staples said,

“This has been a really interesting research project into how blockchain technology can integrate with new payments technologies to provide more choice, control and flexibility for conditional payments for NDIS participants and service providers.”