Corporate coins are coming, Walmart is looking into its own US dollar-backed digital currency, along the same lines of Facebook’s much hyped Libra project.

A patent application outlines a method for “generating one digital currency unit by tying the one digital currency unit to a regular currency; storing information of the one digital currency unit into a block of a blockchain; buying or paying the one digital currency unit”.

According to a patent filing submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Thursday, Walmart’s currency would serve low-income households by offering a “fee-free...