Walmart Applies for a Cryptocurrency Patent for Its Stablecoin Mimicking Facebook’s Libra?

Multinational retail corporation, Walmart has filed for a patent with the US Patent & Trademark Office for what seems like the firm’s respective stablecoin, the Walmart Coin. As per the brief overview of the application, the need for a method was outlined as follows:

“Generating one digital currency unit by tying the one digital currency unit to a regular currency; storing information of the one digital currency unit into a block of a blockchain; buying or paying the one digital currency unit; determining whether restrictions are applied […] by referring to one or more documents associated with the one digital currency,”

and so on.

Walmart’s proposed stablecoin implies fees will be none to very little for storage purposes. It was also stressed that redeeming and converting one’s holding can be done with ease for select retailers or partners.

Interestingly, the target population for said project is low-income households; especially considering the fact that for said individuals, banking services are typically unaffordable. The news outlet highlighted that Walmart believes this would be

“an alternative way to handle wealth at an institution that can supply the majority of their day-to-day financial products and needs.”

The latter is something that was also previously shared by Facebook for its project, Libra. Hence, Walmart’s endeavors have been viewed as having similarities to Libra.

That said, Walmart Coin carries uniqueness as well. In particular, users can supposedly earn interest from it, which is not the case with Libra, as, in the case of the latter, it’s the partners who benefit from its interests.

Another feature that supposedly is similar to Walmart’s loyalty points card program is that the Walmart Coin would also users to use their previous purchases, which are found on the blockchain and the apply said histories towards one’s future purchases as points.

According to the firm,

“A person is the ‘credit card’ to their own digital value bank.”