The poll recently held among its members by the European Payments Council shows that 90% of them believe Blockchain will change the payment industry by 2025.
The EPC represents payment service providers (PSPs) in Europe and promotes European payments integration and development, notably the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).
The Council says it was curious to know what professionals working in the payments industry truly think when it comes to Blockchain as the ongoing debate about its potential impact is hard to miss. Hence, a question was posed to all interested stakeholders: “How may blockchain technology impact the European payments landscape by 2025?”.
Divided on extent of impact
While most members agreed that Blockchain will have an impact and is not just a fad, they are divided regarding the extent of this impact on payments. More than a third - 36% - said that they expect Blockchain to have impact in some niche areas of activities particularly those in which Blockchain is used for specific purposes.
30% of the respondents expect that Blockchain technology will be adopted to help create new customer payment solutions while another 24% of the respondents think Blockchain will have a more comprehensive transformation effect. They think this could cause a complete shift in the payment infrastructure and "may create a paradigm shift" in the industry.
Respondents need to learn more about Bitcoin
Simon Dixon, CEO of BnkToTheFuture.com, agrees with the majority’s view. However, he thinks the professional respondents need to understand more about the Blockchain.
Dixon says:
“I wonder if the results will change if they realise that Bitcoin is the only secure Blockchain that works at scale and that all responsible Blockchain projects in the future will most likely need to use the only secure Blockchain (or technology built on top of the only secure Blockchain) - Bitcoin. In my experience corporate professionals are not aware of the definition of a Blockchain as defined by Satoshi Nakamoto and are confusing their new interest in databases with Blockchains. With this understanding the results may change, but if not, I agree with the 90% that the Bitcoin Blockchain is already changing payments and will have a bigger impact in the future.”
A mere 10% of the respondents think that Blockchain technology would have no significant impact on the payments industry.