USAA researching blockchain technology

USAA headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. The McDermott Building is three-quarters of a
mile long and sits on a 282-acre campus.

The United Services Automobile Association (USAA), a Texas-based financial institution that serves current and former members of the U.S. military, is researching the underlying technology behind Bitcoin in order to improve its operations’ efficiency, reported Reuters.

Alex Marquez, USAA’s managing director of corporate development, told Reuters that the company has a large team researching the potential of blockchain technology. He said the USAA and its banking, insurance, and investment management subsidiaries hope the blockchain technology could help decentralize its operations, such as the back office.

“We have serious interest in the blockchain and we think the technology would have an impact on the organization,” said Marquez to Reuters. “The fact that we have such a large group of people working on this shows how serious we are about the potential of this technology.”

He told Reuters that USAA has no plans to experiment with Bitcoin as a currency. The news outlet reported that the company is still in the early stages of its research into blockchain technology and has yet to identify how it will implement the technology.

USAA was among the investors in Coinbase’s $75-million Series C round, which closed this past January.

Image via USAA’s media kit.

In a previous version of this story, we mistakenly called USAA “United States Automobile Association,” while USAA stands for United Services Automobile Association. We would like to thank Roger Wildermuth, director of Public Affairs, Public Relations, at USAA for pointing out our mistake. We also apologize to our readers for the mistake.