Visa Europe: The Blockchain is 'No Longer a Choice'

Visa Europe highlighted the significance of bitcoin and the blockchain as part of a retrospective on the past year in payments this week, suggesting that traditional finance will soon adopt the technology.

Entitled "Why 2015 was the year for payments", the blog post explores financial tech in a broad sense, while also touching on the subject of digital currencies. The company said that "it’s clear that another transformation is happening" in terms of both investigation of the technology, as well as the shift in the perception surrounding it.

The post continued:

"2015 has turned blockchain into something the industry has to live with. It is no longer a choice anymore. Recent news speculating about the identity of its creator and the formalisation of virtual money as a commodity just makes it more real than ever before."

Visa Europe goes on to posit that the technology will face hurdles on the regulatory front in the year ahead, and that stakeholders need to "address the lack of trust, a challenge the [sic] have faced since their creation".

The post also suggests that uncovering how bitcoin and the blockchain can be used in international payments will be a further topic of focus for its efforts, and those of competing financial firms.

Visa credit card image via Shutterstock