A recent Bank of America Merchant Services report has touched upon the subject of Bitcoin as one of the disruptersin the payment processing ecosystem. Quite an interesting announcement, considering the plan is to expand Bank of America Merchant Services to Europe later this year. Bank of America Merchant Services and Bitcoin
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 Bank of America Merchant Services is focusing their attention on, together with card-present and card-not-present transaction processing in Europe.
But there is more, as this initiative will help facilitate cross-border services, assuming they can get their clients interested in this prospect. All of these new services will be offered together with all of the existing transaction features. Keeping in mind how Bank of America Merchant Services supports over 130 currencies, tackling the European market seems to be of the utmost importance.
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, Bank of America Merchant Services 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 Bank of America has been experimenting with this technology for quite some time now. After all, the financial institution has filed for several blockchain-related patents over the past year and a half, which […]
