How mintBlue’s blockchain invoice records can streamline business and reduce fraud

Users of Dutch accounting software Visma | yuki can now speed up their billing and payment processes, thanks to a partnership with blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) firm mintBlue. The scheme, which includes cooperation and database access from the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, also seeks to reduce the amount of money lost to fraud by quickly verifying whether invoices and their senders are genuine.

Switching to mintBlue’s blockchain-based verification is “seamless” and easy, CEO Niels van den Bergh said in the interview with CoinGeek below. There is no requirement for either coding or blockchain knowledge, and no need to understand how it works. Visma | yuki users can simply turn on a switch in the settings. Users also retain complete ownership and control over their data. Information published on the public blockchain is encrypted and accessible only with the user’s permission.

CTO at Visma | yuki, Jeroen van Haasteren, said that “immutable storage and automation of identity-verified invoices is essential for fraud reduction and the future of e-invoicing.” Invoice processors will be able to verify that invoices are genuine and publish them on the BSV blockchain and use these records to produce paper records if necessary.

The Dutch government has mandated the use of Universal Business Language (UBL) for invoicing since 2019 to automate business processes, and incoming regulatory changes will require it. However, adoption has been slow, and around 80% of invoices are still issued on physical paper or in PDF format. mintBlue and Visma | yuki has ensured that their blockchain records follow UBL formatting.

van den Bergh describes in this Q&A how mintBlue’s SDK and its integration with Visma | yuki works, how users can use it to automate ID and invoice authentication, and how other companies can also use the SDK to integrate mintBlue’s services into their own. Read on to find out more.

Can businesses of all sizes use mintBlue’s integrated service?

Certainly, businesses of all sizes can benefit from using mintBlue’s integrated service. Our technology is designed to offer scalability, privacy and compliance, making it ideal for small businesses and large enterprises alike. We work closely with our customers to ensure that their specific needs are met and that our service integrates seamlessly into their existing systems. Additionally, our non-custodial approach means businesses retain full ownership and control of their data, providing peace of mind and enhanced security.

Unlike most blockchain integrators, no high upfront investment is required, as there is no mandate to run expensive nodes. This makes it more accessible to small and medium-sized businesses. The implementation takes a few hours, as fast as all APIs, but with absolute data control built in.

Is there much of a learning curve to process chain invoicing via Visma | yuki?

It’s as easy as flipping a switch on your page with familiar settings. So there is no significant learning curve for users to process invoices on the chain since it is fully integrated into the Yuki platform. Users do not need any knowledge of the underlying technology. The integration of mintBlue’s solution has simplified the invoicing process, and provides increased security and traceability of financial documents. In addition, Yuki’s customers retain full ownership and control of their data on-chain, ensuring they maintain complete privacy and compliance with their billing processes.

How have you designed the service to minimize this?

To minimize the learning curve and streamline the integration process for our customers, we have developed a fully embedded SDK that handles all client-side cryptographic functions. This non-custodial setup ensures that our customers retain full control over their data and assets.

Moreover, it usually takes around two hours of implementation work to integrate our solution into existing systems. This speaks to the simplicity and efficiency of our design, which prioritizes a seamless experience for our customers. We offer full documentation and ticket-based support. The biggest contributor to the short learning curve is that it works like any other SDK, using your own preferred programming language.

How long have you been developing mintBlue/SDK?

The team has been involved in Bitcoin research and development for over a decade. In 2017, however, we founded Ledgit, a consulting and development company with a focus on custom development and consulting around the BCH and later BSV chains. As we noticed that much of the work required similar features and infrastructure, we produced that infrastructure. We built the mintBlue prototype during the 2020 BSV hackathon, and since then we’ve completely refactored it for scalability, usability, and stability.

For more than a year, we have been operational with live use cases with our customers.

Why has the use of UBL in invoicing been so low, despite the Dutch government mandating it in 2019?

Users don’t understand the funny extra .xml file that was suddenly added to your email when you enable electronic invoicing. So they delete it or send the PDF (which they understand). UBL is a structured format for an invoice, so that other organizations can easily process it. Our solution essentially merges the two files by writing the UBL on the blockchain and making the PDF the key to decrypt it from the blockchain (via QR or PDF metadata).

Your announcement states that paper receipts can also be easily processed on the public blockchain, where they are automatically verified and processed. What information in the chain is publicly visible, and what is not? (and how do you tell the difference?)

The public blockchain only reveals the encryption algorithm and the hash of the (double) encrypted data, while all other information requires a secret for access. In the case of Yuki’s implementation, a QR code containing a transaction ID and a secret is written on the paper invoice. This allows the recipient to decrypt necessary information for verification and processing, ensuring secure, private and reliable processing of paper receipts on the blockchain.

How did you get hold of Chamber of Commerce on board, and how will their support help promote UBL-on-chain to businesses?

The Chamber of Commerce has an innovation arm that looks for new ways in which the organization can serve customers. It is a semi-public organization, meaning it is supported by the government but has a for-profit mandate. The project managers at the innovation arm immediately understood what we were aiming to do, and they had already built most of the infrastructure for another purpose.

Their current infrastructure allows external service providers to call their database and obtain company information that is signed with a public key. It’s basically a certificate with company data in it. We allow users to add a public key to their company registry (they have to go through KYC). Once that’s done, we request the certificate to the Chamber of Commerce with the public key in it. Now we can make derivations of the public key and publish invoice data to the blockchain, and invoice recipients can do a cryptographic trick to validate if the sender is real.

Was it the same for the team at Visma | yuki?

Visma | yuki has always been at the forefront of robotic accounting and the use of computer vision to extract information from invoices. The problem is that data is always lost when scanning, and it is difficult to detect ghost invoices. VISMA | yuki sees this as the next step to ensure invoice processing, have original data always available in the chain and be able to check the validity of incoming documents.

See: mintBlue is poised to further unleash BSV blockchain’s potential

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