A recent Business Intelligence report has touched upon the subject of Bitcoin as one of the disrupters in the payment processing ecosystem. The report received a special mention in an article concerning Bank of America Merchant Services’ plans to expand into Europe later this year.

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Bitcoin will Change Payment Behavior

The primary goal for of any merchant services provider is to come up with new ways to make e-commerce more appealing to both consumer and business. This is one of the areas companies are likely to put their attention on, together with card-present and card-not-present transaction processing in Europe.

But there is more, as this initiative could help facilitate cross-border services, assuming banks can get their clients interested in this prospect. All of these new services could be offered together with all of the existing transaction features.

It comes as quite a surprise to find out their new report also makes mention of Bitcoin and digital currencies. Rather than taking a more negative stance to these potential disrupters in the payments industry, Business Intelligence seems to acknowledge the potential these concepts hold.

The report states the following:

“Devices ranging from refrigerators to smartwatches now feature payment capabilities, which will spur changes in consumer payment behaviors. Likewise, blockchain technology, the protocol that underlies Bitcoin, could one day change how consumer card payments are verified.”

Seeing the mention of blockchain as a utility to verify is not entirely unexpected, considering many leading finance institutions has been experimenting with this technology for quite some time now. Bank of America itself has filed for several blockchain-related patents over the past year and a half, which seems to indicate they have some significant plans for this technology.

Cross-border payments are another exciting area where both Bitcoin and the blockchain can make a major impact. Not only is it far cheaper and quicker to send payments with Bitcoin to anyone in the world, but the digital currency also removes the middleman from the equation. Moreover, the blockchain is available to everyone in the world, and can be used to create a financial ecosystem outside of the banking infrastructure.

Source: Business Insider

Header image courtesy of Business Insider UK