- JD Finance has opened its first Smart City Research Institute.
- The firm has expanded its investment in blockchain technology in recent years.
- The Smart cities will make use of AI and blockchain.
JD Finance, the financial arm of Chinese e-commerce giant JD has announced on the 28th of September 2018 that it has opened the Smart City Research Institute at its headquarters in Nanjing.
The firm has always worked on creating new innovations to benefit the e-commerce and logistics sectors. Their latest endeavor will see them creating ‘smart cities’ with the use of Artificial Intelligence, blockchain technology, and big data.
The headquarters in Nanjing aims to help reduce the cost of production within the e-commerce industry while improving efficiency. The headquarters will also influence “the entire East China region” according to the company.
Aims and Objectives
JD, since its inception, has always been committed to improving performance in the e-commerce sector. It has done so with numerous technologies and blockchain technology is simply another concept they are embracing.
The company has stated, through the official report that its goals are: “Advanced Intelligent solutions in the areas of urban environment, transportation, planning, energy consumption, commerce, security, healthcare, credit cities, and e-government.”
A Blockchain Affair
This, of course, is not the company’s first run with the distributed ledger technology. They have applied it in their logistics and supply chain management as well. They have even used it in the issuing of securities.
This year, the company actually expanded on its efforts by announcing a service called JD blockchain open platform. The platform will enable businesses to apply blockchain based solutions to their operations.
This means that the businesses do not need to create their own blockchain platforms from scratch which in itself can take quite a bit of time and money.
Dedicated Efforts
A number of firms are starting to create their own blockchain arms. However, JD has gone a step further by giving its blockchain arm its very own research institute.
If their previous endeavors were them dabbling in blockchain technology, then this is them jumping in head-first. Clearly, their previous experience shows that there is both a solid market and substantial profit to be made by exploring blockchain.
This sentiment also seems to be shared by other Chinese firms. Just last month Ping An, one of the world’s biggest insurance groups, released a whitepaper on smart cities.
