CEO of Visa: Bitcoin Not a Competition

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Bitcoin has the opportunity to go against pre-existing payment processors like Visa, Western Union and Citigroup. So the question is, what is stopping them from doing so?

It seems the answer is the lack of support the majority of society has in bitcoin. But is it really society’s fault for simply not knowing what bitcoin is? Maybe bitcoin is still in its infancy to make a major difference in lives of ordinary people. Even if people did know about bitcoin, would they use digital currencies  in place of those shiny flexible plastic credit and debit cards?

Although finance experts neglect the uses of bitcoin and some go as far as to claim it’s innovation a scam, they are very much aware of and perhaps fear its competitive attributes towards the traditional money processing methods.

Visa has recently dismissed bitcoin as one of its competitors, yet, oddly enough, they continue to watch it closely. The credit card company remains confident that traditional payment methods will rain dominant over bitcoin and other virtual currencies.

During a conference call on January 30th, CEO of Visa Charlie Scharf took a moment to answer a question regarding bitcoin. Scharf said that the currency was interesting, but contains too many complexities. He then went on to say that crypto-currency was not as safe as traditional payment networks. Scharf lists his reasons why current payment options are better than bitcoin:

“The established network rules we have, the understanding of how things operate, understanding who the participants are, the fact that the business that we do has financial institutions on either side of the transaction.”

Scharf ended the bitcoin portion of the conference call saying Visa is “paying attention to it (bitcoin).”

 Visa Shouldn’t Count Out BTC

Bitcoin may be unpopular to some, but the list of bitcoin implemented businesses is a long one and continues to grow longer each day. Retailers put faith in something they feel will be around for a long time, and that will boost business sales. Regardless of how influential bitcoin is today, Visa would be making a critical mistake; one good for the bitcoin community, if it truly doesn’t view BTC as a competition.

With Bitcoin’s market cap soaring over $10 billion, bitcoin is proving that it is the real deal, even when compared to Visa’s market cap of staggering $140 billion. Though bitcoin has ways to go, the numbers are simply incredible for a currency system which has only been around for a few short years.

Stay tuned with Coinreport for more Bitcoin news.