Bloom Seeks To Help DeFi With Compliance And Moving Beyond Collateralized Lending With OnRamp

Fast-rising blockchain company Bloom has announced the launch of OnRamp, a new enterprise product built to help DeFi seek compliance and the move beyond collateralized lending.

The Miami-based company that describes itself as a leading blockchain solution for digital identity and reusable, verifiable credentials (VCs) is on a mission to protect user privacy, mitigate data breaches and expand financial inclusivity by changing the way data is shared, stored and used.

“We are transforming global identity and credit through a decentralized infrastructure that is private, secure, financially inclusive, and consumer-controlled.

Bloom's mission is to provide superior data and identity authorization and authentication to consumers and businesses worldwide” the company said.

Data hacks have been on the rise with many large organizations revealing they have become victims of this type of attack. Recently, LinkedIn and Facebook suffered a chronic data breach and over 350GB of personal data were leaked. T-mobile suffered the same fate earlier this year when over 50 million customers' data was stolen. These incidents, along with scandals like the Cambridge Analytica saga, have happened enough times that consumers do not feel like their data is truly safe when they give it to corporations.

With OnRamp, enterprises can securely access reusable, verifiable credentials (VCs), all without requiring users to expose sensitive data — thereby limiting exposure to data leak. This can go a long way to rebuilding consumer trust that has been eroded over the years because of these hacks and security breaches.

This is particularly important for an emerging industry like DeFi that is trying to gain more ground in the mainstream. Considering that some people are skeptical about crypto and blockchain, this would likely endear the industry even more to the public.

Bloom’s new product offers ID verification, sanction screening and PEP Screening for enterprises seeking KYC & AML compliance. Other identity credentials include phone number, email as well as social accounts like Facebook, Google, Linkedin and Twitter.

With OnRamp, enterprises can also access alternative data and enable better risk assessment with secure access to bank account activity, balances, and other financial signals. Future planned integrations include traditional credit scores, utility bill payment history, and other alternative signals that could be helpful in determining creditworthiness. The global credit and loan industry has been scrutinized quite a bit in the last few years and blockchain could provide an alternative to it by considering other factors besides a traditional credit score.

For loan providers, this could mean a better way to decide which applicants are the most creditworthy. This can also go a long way to promote financial inclusivity by allowing customers to access these services while maintaining their privacy.

All these benefits will be far-reaching and will likely go a long way to changing not just DeFi but the world of finance as well. More announcements are expected from Bloom moving forward.