According to Visa, the year of 2015 has been definitely the year of the blockchain.
The last week of each year seems to exist for summing up. People all over the world decide what plans have been fulfilled and what mistakes have been made. Business entities are not the exception – most companies publish annual reports with their achievements.
Visa Europe has presented its summary “Why 2015 was the year for payments”. According to it, fintech sector saw a rapid evolution in 2015. UK cardholders have spent £929 million in transactions, up 213.1% on the previous year.
The value of the average transaction was £7.72. The sphere of payments welcomed such new players as Apple, Samsung and Google. Apple Pay officially launched in the UK allowing iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch users to make contact-less payments using their devices and Samsung came up with SamsungPay.
Visa mentioned separately the blockchain and its increasing role in the fintech. This year has turned blockchain into the most promising technology of 2015. The development way is not easy but the progress is evident.
“The challenges for blockchain and bitcoin in the year ahead will be two-fold. Proponents will have to further address the lack of trust, a challenge they have faced since their creation. Then, the challenge of turning these technologies to tackle more real-world scenarios, such as sending money overseas,” says Visa.
The end of the current year for Visa Europe has been marked by its partnership with Californian company Epiphyte, which serves the financial industry players providing distributed ledger solutions for international money transfers.
The two companies have teamed up to develop the proof of concept for cross-border remittances. The new project is aimed at making remittance services easier and more effective with the use of bitcoin and blockchain technology.
“Here at Visa Europe Collab, we recognize the potential of blockchain technology to improve existing processes and protocols, particularly in areas that traditional payment rails have been less suitable for,” admitted the company.
“We believe there’s a real opportunity to develop an improved remittance service for both the sender and receiver of payments in terms of fees, speed and ease of use. By combining our experience as the largest payments network in the world, with Epiphyte’s knowledge of the distributed ledger, we’re hoping we can identify ways to improve the experience and better understand how these findings might be applied to remittance processes in the future.”
The whole year we have been telling you about various companies that believe in the blockchain and make considerable efforts to apply the technology to financial sector. Visa Europe, as well as many others, has contributed to improve the payment services sector with the help of this technology. Hopefully, the new 2016 will bring even more innovations!
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