The director of the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), whose clients include such giants as MasterCard, Paypal and Amazon, praised the potential of Bitcoin. He believes that the technology is already quite mature, and one fine day Bitcoin can rightfully enter the payments industry.
Jason Oksman told the Wall Street Journal that the payment industry is undergoing profound changes. This is due to the arrival of new services for mobile payments. Emerging mobile services rely on numerous technological advances in this area.
Oksman proved to be a keen enthusiast in everything related to mobile payments, a biometric authentication … and other advanced technologies, including Bitcoin. He says:
“We are participating in this movement, without question. After all, this is the next technological innovation in the financial industry after … magnetic tape on cards. A truly revolutionary time in the world of payments. ”
The notorious magnetic tape has been used to process plastic cards for fifty years. It still stores user personal data on debit and credit cards. In the new debit and credit cards, microchips and biometric methods are gradually beginning to be used, but the essence of the processing method has not changed at all.
Mobile users who use near contactless communication (NFC) or Bluetooth LE, and users of various digital wallets are now also starting to “pinch a piece of cake” from the payment market.
The fact that the payment industry relies on technology fifty years ago plays into the hands of Bitcoin supporters. It is easy for them to show the payment industry with such a dinosaur. But not so simple, in fact. The need to maintain the old standards has not been cancelled. And upgrading a huge financial infrastructure around the world can be quite a long process.
On the contrary, Oksman believes that the payment industry is not far behind the times. He gave examples of how MasterCard and Visa were already seriously engaged in mobile payments.
Bitcoin Potential
Oksman is generally positive about digital currencies. He admits that the Bitcoin network has a much more efficient server side for processing transactions than a comprehensive and multi-level banking network. Oksman is sure that Bitcoin companies will one day be able to become significant participants in the payment network.
However, Oxman did not forget to warn about the high risks of fraud, and expressed deep concern about the security of the system. Noting that the payment industry is not yet aware of measures to enhance Bitcoin security, he concluded that it is still too early for digital currency to become one of the solutions for ETA:
“The position of ETA regarding Bitcoin and other digital currencies is that they have a right to exist. They should be subject to the same rights and laws as other payment systems that offer such services. ”
A positive view from the side of ETA is not the first example of a favourable attitude of payment systems to Bitcoin. Colm Lyon, director of Realex Payments, recently admitted to Coindesk that the industry needs to become more developed and flexible in order to prepare for the arrival of Bitcoin.
A good example of the development of a digital payment service is Paym. This system has over 30 million subscribers in Britain. Paym customers use the service for payments via mobile devices.
