[2015-0625] IBT: Payments dinosaurs face off Bitcoin technology threat

[pawel7777]

Visa, MasterCard and Amex: Payments dinosaurs face off Bitcoin technology threat

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/visa-mastercard-amex-payments-dinosaurs-face-off-bitcoin-technology-threat-1507973

Whereas the dinosaurs didn't know what hit them, huge payments companies can see the threat from things such as distributed ledger technology hurtling their way and still have time to try and avoid extinction.

IBTimes UK spoke with executives from the big three processors – Visa, MasterCard and American Express – at the MoneyConf in Belfast earlier in June, and asked them in turn about their blockchain strategies, innovations and how efficiently their existing systems work.

Fielding a question about whether Visa has a Bitcoin-related technology strategy, Jonathan Vaux, executive director of innovation partnerships, Visa Europe, said: "There are two elements here: the blockchain technology itself, which is very interesting for transactions, then there is bitcoin the currency.

Blockchain gang

"We are certainly looking at applications involving blockchain. What can you do with this? We know there's a peer-to-peer transaction network happening but we don't see it scaling unless there is trust in the system.

"Certainly we are looking at it in a lab environment and as quick way of routing it's exciting. We have a team in London looking at specific use cases," he said.

Regards advancements in distributed ledger solutions swallowing up enormous swathes of payment processors' functionality, Vaux said "platforms are always upgrading, this has always been happening".
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[Chef Ramsay]

What they have in their corner is that most people have credit cards for a reason and obviously that is to spend what they don't currently have until a certain date or beyond. This mindset is hard to coincide into what bitcoin can do for people as you'd need to buy/earn your currency first and spend it or save it later, for these types. Many of these types aren't tech knowledgeable nor are savers/investors to begin with so they aren't concerned with anything besides the ease of payment and whether it's worth it to them to pay with via a discount as an incentive.

[Kprawn]

MasterCard --> " We are the middle man between the banking systems and the retailers and we've got 250,000 merchants worldwide on MasterPass, so the scale we operate at is significant."

So they are saying Bitcoin merchant adoption is no match for them, they allready have the upper hand with MasterPass.

Most of these payment processors already have a huge user base... whatever digital token they link to their cardholders would mean instant adoption. Only problem is.. it's not decentralized and very vulnerable to hackers.