Mastercard is collaborating with food track-and-trace software provider Envisible to create a blockchain-based supply chain platform that will help supermarkets with tracing the origin of seafood.

Powered by Mastercard’s blockchain-based Provenance service Envisible’s new Wholechain traceability system has a futuristic design. It is developed in a way that helps grocery partners with more insight into the ethical sourcing and environmental compliance of the seafood sold at their stores.

Topco‘s member grocery chains, starting with Food City, will be the first to use the supply chain ledger. Salmon, cod and shrimp will be the first ones to be tracked followed by other species. 

Deborah Barta, senior vice president, Innovation and Startup Engagement, at Mastercard said, “Companies in fragmented supply chains make it harder to see end-to-end traceability. We thought what if we brought blockchain in to track from the origin of goods to consumer’s hands and give the ability to see ethical sourcing, compliance and enable consumers to discover the journey of the products they’re buying.”

Wholechain is a “production-grade system” – not a proof of concept or pilot, Barta said.

Customers at Topco’s stores will see QR codes on seafood and all they need to do is scan it with their smartphone’s camera to gain information on the said seafood. The data could be the background information on where the fish were caught and the journey to the store.

This solution has extreme potential and Mastercard has plans to go a step further and extend it to designer wear, luxury goods and more, the company said. The initial goal of the company when it launched its Provenance blockchain service in April, it was to track and monitor the production chain for some in the fashion industry.

“Mastercard is trying to be in the middle of the lucrative $125 trillion business-to-business payment market by establishing a foothold in one of the most successful and promising use cases for blockchain, i.e. provenance – and in this case provenance for seafood that is prone to spoilage and must be handled super carefully in transit,” said Avivah Litan, a Gartner vice president of research.

Gartner conducted a survey this year of around 850 blockchain projects from across the borders. The results indicated that provenance and the related asset tracking use cases are gaining the most traction and moving the fastest into pilot and limited production status in comparison to other use cases, such as identity management/know-your-customer (KYC), trade finance, trading, voting among others.

“Blockchain has the potential to support much more efficient and rapid payments than is possible today on legacy networks,” Litan said. “Blockchain also gives participants much needed visibility into the end-to-end payment stream, helping to eliminate most of the time spent on costly disputes and resolutions.”

Mastercard and Envisible’s supply chain could be named as a hybrid blockchain, where B2B data is transmitted across a permissioned blockchain and the consumer-facing information resides on a public or open blockchain. Ecommerce might witness a dominance of hybrid blockchains in the near future.