Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/59937401@N07/In a story published by The Australian Financial Review (AFR), Visa’s CEO Charles Scharf said that the payment company could handle bitcoin-based payments in the future, although it currently had no plans to integrate such payments. Scharf’s was speaking at the opening of Visa Labs in San Francisco, and the comments were prompted by a question from the audience in that increasingly bitcoin-obsessed city. Visa Labs is part of an ongoing initiative at the global payments company, and is aimed at making its network more secure while lowering payment friction. While Scharf was clear that bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general, aren’t a part of that plan, he did suggest that the two will not be mutually exclusive.
“Visa is not a currency, it’s a network,” Scharf told the audience. “We can process real or virtual currencies to the extent that it makes sense.”
With several bitcoin companies, such as Xapo, actively working with debit card companies to create a bitcoin-backed system that would be compatible with the existing payment system, it would not be surprising to learn that Visa and its rivals have several bitcoin-related projects in the works.
Scharf did make an effort to halt any speculation that such products were on the horizon, however, noting: “So it is possible but we are not thinking about it today.”
Last week, a single mining pool, GHash.io, briefly gained over 51% of the hashing power of the entire network. Although several core developers have claimed that a true 51% attack is extremely unlikely, and that the centralization of mining power isn’t the huge problem it has been presented as, this did little to slow the…
The Glasgow location of British used-electronics store CeX announced a trial program to offer customers bitcoin rather than cash for their trade ins. For three days, the company’s Sauchiehall store will drop the U.K. pound sterling entirely from trade purchases, paying out exclusively in bitcoin. While clearly a publicity stunt, the move will allow some…
Ether is the second most valuable form of digital money after bitcoin. Ethereum is a rising star in the world of cryptocurrencies, entirely digital forms of currency that grew in popularity after the creation of bitcoin. A cryptocurrency is a form of digital currency created through encryption. A cryptocurrency has no physical form — like…
Intellectual games are actively presented on the world arena of desktop and mobile platforms. There are many game developers who caught the people’s crave to keeping their grey cells supplied with daily workouts. At present, the global market of mobile intelligent games is up to 4.9 billion USD, and their audience is constantly increasing, which…
Bitcoin is predicted to break more ground this year due to the sheer number of people that are getting behind the cryptocurrency. The global support for the digital fund’s blockchain technology, as well as the high demand for mining Bitcoin, will lead to more investors wanting to get exposure to the cryptocurrency in one form…
In a new report published by Switzerland’s Federal Council, regulators claim that the “economic importance of virtual currencies as a means of payment is fairly insignificant at the moment.” The report claims that bitcoin and other digital currencies will have a marginal effect on the Swiss economy for the “foreseeable future,” and no influence on…
