Digital platforms should be wired for rule compliance

livemint.com:

reliance on these systems of legal ordering. As our world becomes more digital, the greater is our need to try and embed the regulations to which we are subject directly into the digital systems that enable our interactions. We can already begin to see early signs of what this might look like in the ways our stock markets and digital payments ecosystems operate, given that their digital workflows already implement underlying regulatory architectures designed to ensure the safety of participants and the certainty of their transactions.

The more we integrate digital technologies into our daily lives, the easier it should be for us to define through code the regulations to which different aspects of society are subject. The Beckn protocol—that has featured previously in this column—is a digital ecosystem for commerce. It is designed to enable interoperable digital workflows across a broad range of commercial transactions.

Buyers of goods and services can use the open digital networks that Beckn enables to consume commercial resources that sellers have made available on it. In doing so, it offers an alternative to the vertically integrated digital platforms we have grown accustomed to. But more importantly, since it describes end-to-end digital workflows for commercial interactions, the Beckn protocol offers us the opportunity to embed regulations pertaining to the commercial transactions performed on it directly into the code of the digital ecosystem.

How would that work? Before we go there, let’s quickly refresh ourselves on how Beckn works. Commercial transactions have three basic components—discovery, ordering and fulfilment. Beckn describes these components using digital protocols.