The status of services in the banking sector is characterized by time lags and high transaction costs. For these reasons, blockchain has been hailed as a revolutionary technology due to its ability to reduce transaction costs and increase the effectiveness of cross-border transactions.
But big banks are now beginning to question the ability of blockchain to solve these problems and whether the technology has matured enough to warrant large-scale application. Big banks such as Russia’s Central Bank, the Bank of Canada and the Central Bank of the Netherlands are among leaders in the banking industry that have raised these concerns.
Their concerns come soon after Western Union’s CEO claimed that the cost of payments had not reduced after six months of testing the Ripple XRP.
Looming Competition
But cryptocurrency players seem to view the situation differently and are critical of these negative commentaries. Alex Karasulu, CTO and founder of OptDyn, feels that Western Union transfer service is threatened by blockchain because it is a competing technology. He says: