Inacta and leading Swiss real estate company launched first blockchain application

Swiss Prime Site has decided to enter into a strategic partnership with the Zug-based IT consultancy firm inacta. The agreement will enable the two companies to work together on developing new applications based on Blockchain technology. These will make it possible for Swiss Prime Site and its Group company Wincasa to deliver their real estate services more efficiently.

In the real estate sector, Blockchain applications have the potential to make the administration of office and residential contracts significantly more efficient. Wincasa, Switzerland’s largest integrated real estate services provider, manages properties worth CHF 65 billion. In its residential business alone, Wincasa establishes more than 16 000 leases every year. Before the advent of the new Blockchain app, the creation and dissolution of rental escrow deposit accounts for property leases was a laborious process involving four separate parties. Processing the necessary verifications and signatures required numerous individual subtasks. Working with inacta, Swiss Prime Site has been able to demonstrate that by using Blockchain technology it is possible to create a highly efficient mechanism enabling tenants and landlords to process the initial payment and ultimate reimbursement of escrow deposits directly between themselves.

Thanks to this new technology, Swiss Prime Site and Wincasa have been able to generate genuine added value for tenants and clients alike. As Urs Baumann, Swiss Prime Site’s Head of Sustainability and Innovation, explains, «We see this first application as a door opener which will enable our clients to derive concrete benefits from using decentralised data bookkeeping technology. Very soon, smart contracts of this kind will be in ever wider use.»

The prospects for using Blockchain technology to digitalise business processes are promising. Having first attracted attention through its role in the development of Bitcoin, the digital currency, this new technology is now being used for a growing range of business applications. In the wake of these developments, Switzerland and the Zug region in particular have established themselves as a worldwide hub for cryptographic and Blockchain technologies. Markus Fischer, Head of Business Development at inacta, is convinced that «the best approach is for companies to start by applying Blockchain technology to a relatively simple business process, so that they can get a sense of its potential. Most of the Blockchain applications developed so far have been for banks and insurance companies. With Swiss Prime Site, we now have a visionary market leader from the real sector embarking on this innovative trajectory.»

(Press release)