Another major financial player is eyeing the power of blockchain. Visa Europe has thrown its hand in the rapidly growing ring of institutions that are looking to test how bitcoin’s blockchain could be useful for remittances. Currently, in the market, most are after creating their own distributed ledgers. Visa Europe is looking to test its product by running it live via bitcoin blockchain. It’s doing so in a proof-of-concept test with its project partner Epiphyte to see how funds can be sent cross-border using Visa’s services. The company is after finding an actual “human use case” for the technology that was focused on the remittance market. This has been identified as one major area where P2P payments could be used on blockchain. “A payment that would go from fiat currency and be received in [Kenyan mobile money service] M-Pesa, but it would be facilitated through one of the blockchain providers that enables transfers of those funds,” Edan Yago, CEO of Epiphyte, told CoinDesk. But why specifically bitcoin? For one, he said, it offers an actual solution for the remittance market. “The big change that really sets the [bitcoin] opportunity apart here, is that by using an open non-proprietary standard, you can have local players integrating with it and providing you with a wide range of network effects,” Yago explained. Instead of working with private blockchains, Visa Europe and Epiphyte are using the open bitcoin blockchain, which allows for a more seamless payment system to be created for Visa Europe’s specific needs. “Visa has the most powerful payments network in the world and our ability to extend that functionality is very, very strong evidence we can then extend the functionality of any payments network,” Yago said in the interview. Back in the U.S., Visa has been a proponent of blockchain technology. It was announced in September that a group of major financial companies have agreed to invest $30 million in Chain, a San Francisco-based provider of blockchain technology solutions to financial institutions. The investors of the latest round include Visa, Nasdaq, Citi Ventures, Capital One, Fiserv and Orange SA. “Technology relationships and investments, such as Chain, allow Visa to evaluate new technology that has the potential to deliver new payment innovation and support clients’ needs. Chain has built a platform that makes rapid prototyping easier, and the company is focused on finding practical enterprise applications of blockchain technology — a goal that we share in our evaluation of the technology,” Jim McCarthy, executive VP of innovation and strategic partnerships at Visa, told PYMNTS.
Visa Europe is the latest financial institution to announce a proof of concept project to explore how the blockchain can be useful for international remittances. However, while most institutions are looking at creating their own private distributed ledgers, Visa Europe is teaming up with distributed ledger specialist Epiphyte to test its product by running it on the live public blockchain: "The big change that really sets the [Bitcoin] opportunity apart here, is that by using an open non-proprietary standard, you can have local players integrating with it and providing you with a wide range of network effects", says Edan Yago, CEO of Epiphyte.