Ripple recently summarized the company’s CTO David Schwartz’s debate, which took place within the framework of Money 20/20 conference. According to the article, Schwartz debated with the SVP of Product Strategy at FIS Payments, Esther Pigg on the topic of the future significance of blockchain technology, yesterday, on October 22.
Schwartz touched on the “pro” side of the new technology to have a major influence in the field of today’s payments. His argument stated: “first, today’s global payments systems were built before the Internet – for the postal and batch era — and are not able to address market demands today. And, as an industry, we’ve been trying to put band-aids on the problem for years now. Apple Pay, SWIFT GPI, bank’s web and mobile interfaces — these are all just short-term fixes”.
Schwartz went on explaining that it is hardly possible to stop technological advancement in the times when technology is shown to “dramatically improve or solve a problem”. The new technology of blockchain is hence aiming to do this for cross-border payments. In addition, on its way, it will be more than useful for many other cases as well.
Why Blockchain?
While commenting that blockchain the ideal solution for the field, Schwartz three main reasons including security, reliability and governance. “Look at what email did to postal mail. Look at what digital music did to CDs. And, if you look at the developing world, they skipped landlines completely. We can say the same for the developing world moving straight to mobile wallets”, continued the CTO.
Schwartz also commented on the interoperability of the technology and regulations in the field. While talking about the first, he mentioned Interledger which is the interoperability protocol of blockchain. “Interledger is similar to how Internet IP works today. It allows all blockchain ledgers to connect, regardless of what digital assets are being exchanged across them”, explained the comment. On regulation, Schwartz stated that it is a very important aspect nowadays as those will insure the protection of customers.
Full overview is available here.
