WeChat Introduces Blockchain Invoices Meant To Repay Employee Expenses

The messaging, social media and financial services giant from China, WeChat, is in the news again. This time, it is its newly developed electronic invoice system at the Shenzhen Guomao Rotary Restaurant in the city of Shenzhen, China. According to the company owned by Tencent Holdings Limited, the new technology will help in issuing invoices and will be based on blockchain technology.

The system takes care of payment, invoicing and reimbursement – and was created in partnership with Shenzhen Taxation Bureau and Kingdee Software. Developed to simplify the process of repaying employees and taking care of their expenses, it is designed to overcome the elongated process of verification, submission, review, and tax returns filing before settling with employees.

Not only the blockchain invoice system improves the process of employee expense reimbursement – it also removes all intermediary actions between the invoicing and reimbursement – in a one-click reimbursement process.

This way, merchants will save on both time and personnel since the invoices will be issued automatically at checkout rather than the manual invoice issuing and entry of relevant details about their employee profiles (for tax purposes).

On top of this, the tax regulator can monitor the entire process of invoicing, circulation and reimbursement in real time – helping in full and timely tax collection while the employees can claim the reimbursements online.

As the deputy director of the Shenzhen tax bureau, Li Wei said:

“The digital invoice based on blockchain technology has features such as complete traceability of the whole process and non-disruptive information, which consistent with invoice logic, can effectively avoid false invoices, and improve the invoice supervision process.”

Right now, the first merchants to access and use the blockchain electronic invoicing system include the names of Shenzhen Guomao Rotating Restaurant, Baoan District Sports Center Parking Lot, Kaixin Auto Trading Co., Ltd., and Image Tencent Impression Coffee Shop.