The List of Banks Using Blockchain Technology May Be Short, but the Future Is Still Bright

Despite the furor surrounding blockchain technology over the past few years, it would appear that not everyone is climbing aboard the hype train just yet.

Granted, we’ve seen some significant interest from some of finance’s major players, with the likes of Mastercard (NYSE:MA) and IBM (NYSE:IBM) heralding the technology as the answer to being able to move money around the globe with fewer issues and faster, but not everyone seems sold on the idea.

One such company is TransferWise, the London-based startup that currently transfers money between over 70 countries at the time of writing and who boasts a reduction in bank fees and savings of up to eight times that which you would spend with a bank.

Co-Founder and Chairman of TransferWise, Taavet Hinrikus, believes he hasn’t seen a benefit from the technology yet.

A Lot Harder Than It Looks

Speaking on an episode of Fortune’s Balancing the Ledger, he said that

“we’ve heard this dream many times from different people. However if you start digging into it, you realize that it may look great on paper, but in reality, to make use of it, it’s really hard.”

A considerable part of the issue with blockchain technology at the moment is that there hasn’t been enough uptake from institutional banks to make the use of the technology more efficient than current payment systems.

Hinrikus at TransferWise raises a point about the Ripple Network, a startup that uses blockchain technology to facilitate cross-border payments between banks in an almost instantaneous fashion.

“If every bank in the world was going through the Ripple network, it would be amazing. Yet how many banks are using Ripple today in production? It’s a very short list.”

He’s right, of course, but while Ripple may not be in use exclusively throughout the financial world, it’s certainly not wasting any time in e…

This article appeared first on Cryptovest

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