Visa has a dedicated team in London to look at specific use cases involving blockchain technology, but argues that bitcoin will not achieve general acceptance "unless there is confidence in the system," said Jonathan Vaux, Executive Director of Innovation Partnerships Visa Europe.
Speaking to International Business Times in MoneyConf in Belfast, Vaux shared the blockchain strategy signature, and said his company was "definitely looking applications involving blockchain."
What can be done about this? We know that there is a transaction network peer-to-peer but do not see it happening climbing unless there is confidence in the system. Certainly we are seeing in a laboratory environment and so quickly routing is exciting. We have a team in London looking at specific use cases.
While Visa has followed the example of companies like Nasdaq, Overstock, IBM, Samsung, UBS, Barclays, Banco Santander and Intel, MasterCard said it "is not actively working on solutions related to Bitcoin" but has been " [seeing] cryptocurrency market closely, "said Andrew Buckley, director of MasterCard Europe products.
Meanwhile, Buckley said the current priority of his company was to bring more people into the digital world. "Our focus is on these hundreds of millions of people with some plastic in their wallets," he said, adding:
We find interesting from a technological point of view, but now we do not see as a viable solution for conventional trade.
Andrew Buckley
Product Manager MasterCard Europe
For Buckley, bitcoin is an irrelevant issue yet, which he said "How do get into this new digital world? Once we have solved, and the two billion people who have not gotten a card, then we can start worrying about other things. "