One of Australia's biggest banks, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), will trial the peer-to-peer, online payment transfer system, Ripple, best known for its dealings with cryptocurrencies.

In a speech at the Australian Information Industry Association lunch in Sydney on Wednesday, the bank's chief information officer David Whiteing said the company will use Ripple to transfer payments between subsidiaries, CIO Australia reported. He also said he didn't see why cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin could not be added to the bank's accounts.

“Bitcoin is a protocol which is now being replicated by non-asset based vendors like Ripple and others. We absolutely see that’s where it’s going to go," Whiteing said.

The CBA has internally been testing crypto protocols and will soon begin a wider experiment with one of its offshore subsidiaries to explore the benefits of intrabank transfers using these protocols, a CBA spokesperson confirmed to Mashable Australia.

"The idea is to test in a controlled environment what a bank-to-bank internal transfer might look like using crypto rather than existing payment providers," the spokesperson said. "We are ensuring our testing remains internal within Commonwealth Bank Group and we continue to comply with all legal and regulatory requirements."

Whiteing's keynote foreshadowed a broader re-evaluation of how people can store and exchange things of value at the bank, from Bitcoin to frequent flier points.

"I have a view that a bank account will become a storer of value, rather than a storer of currency value, so why can't a bank account be used to store loyalty points," Whiteing said. "We have multi-currency bank accounts today, with 15 currencies available on your phone instantly in real-time ... It shouldn't be that difficult for us to then add cryptocurrencies to it."

With a similar vision of the future of banking he calls the "Internet of Value," Ripple Labs CEO and co-founder Chris Larsen has also indicated he sees the future of financial systems as moving beyond dollars and cents. “Our mission is to modernize decades-old payments infrastructure with IP-based technology so value moves around the world as freely, easily, securely and transparently as information on the web today,” he said in a statement in May.

Bitcoin, however, has not faired too well Down Under. Previously, the National Australia Bank (NAB) accepted Bitcoin-related accounts, but announced it was closing them down in April 2014. A spokesperson told Mashable Australia NAB does not currently bank or trade in unregulated currencies, or have any plans to do so.

The other two major Australian banks, the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and Wespac, did not immediately respond to request for comment regarding their current position on cryptocurrencies.

David Glance, director of the University of Western Australia's Centre for Software Practice, who writes regularly about Bitcoin, expressed skepticism about Whiteing's indication of support for cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has failed to gain any traction in the market as a currency of exchange, he said, so apart from attracting publicity, it could be of no real financial interest to the banks.

"I think it's the Betamax of the currency world. All great in principle, but not actually used except for buying drugs on the Internet," he added. "There's no evidence there's been a sufficient increase in interest to warrant the banks getting involved with it."

"The universal attitude up until now has been not to touch it with a barn pole ... Colour me surprised if [the banks] do get into it," Glance added.