Visa is the world’s largest payment network and handles nearly 56,000 transaction messages a second. In August 2015, the company had announced the opening up of a new technology development centre in Bangalore, India.
According to a press release made by Visa the aim of this development centre is to boost digital commerce globally.
It has now been revealed that this centre will also focus on blockchain the technology behind Bitcoin.
Visa chooses Blockchain
According to the Indian financial newspaper Mint a Top Visa executive has revealed that the company plans to use Blockchain technology to improve its payments processes.
Rajat Taneja, executive vice-president of technology at ViVisasa Inc., says:
“For now, the focus of this technology innovation centre will be on Visa Checkout and mVisa (Visa’s two new digital mobile payment products), but for certain, India will soon have teams that will jointly work with our two research labs in US and Singapore in studying the many aspects of blockchain”
Visa betting big on India development centre
Visa has set up its technology development centre at Bangalore in South India. This centre will be at the forefront of its work on Blockchain.
In an interview for The Economic Times, TR Ramachandran, Group Country Manager at Visa for India and South Asia reveals:
“We are up to 750 people now (at the new centre). We do two-three things here, including Visa developer platforms, global products, etc. This is not an outsourced centre — there is some very cool developer work that is going on here. The aim is to get it up to 1,000 people over the next 12-18 months. Our expectation is that there will be a lot of work that is done around our APIs.”
It is no longer a choice
Visa is putting a lot of efforts into Blockchain and they are doing their best to use this technology. In a blogpost Visa revealed that ‘2015 was definitely the year for payments’.
A spokesperson of Visa says:
“When 2015 arrived a lot of innovation chatter in Fintech focused on Bitcoin, but as we leave the year that focus has shifted substantially to the blockchain. If we think back to how it was perceived a year ago and then how it is understood today, it’s clear that another transformation is happening. 2015 has turned blockchain into something the industry has to live with. It is no longer a choice anymore. Recent news speculating about the identity of its creator and the formalisation of virtual money as a commodity, just makes it more real than ever before.”
So there we have it, a financial giant like Visa has come to accept Bitcoin and Blockchain as a part of the transformation that is happening on the ground today. This can only be great news for the crypto community.