Blockchain: Officially mainstream now

Blockchain technology has got a big boost with both the major payment companies globally—Visa and Mastercard—announcing their plans to embrace Blockhain,  in a span of barely ten days. This is expected to give a big boost to Blockchain initiatives globally, ultimately making it mainstream.  

MasterCard, in its development site (developer.mastercard.com) announced three APIs (application programming interface)—Blockchain core API, its SmartContract language API and FastPay Network API. The APIs have been released by MasterCard Labs, the payment provider’s innovation division.

The release of public APIs means the payment giant is looking at a more collaborative approach.

This is in contrast to the approach taken by Visa, the other top payment provider, which also released its Blockchain plans barely ten days back. Visa announced Visa B2B Connect, a new platform that aims to to ‘give financial institutions a simple, fast and secure way to process business-to-business payments globally.” Though Visa is developing it, in partnership with Blockchain start-up Chain, it is taking an end-to-end development approach.

“Visa is developing a new near real-time transaction system designed for the exchange of high-value international payments between participating banks on behalf of their corporate clients. Managed by Visa end-to-end, Visa B2B Connect will facilitate a consistent process to manage settlement through Visa’s standard practices,” said an announcement from the company.

Visa plans to pilot the Visa B2B Connect in 2017.

Last year, MasterCard had invested in Digital Currency Group, which works in digital currency space. MasterCard, Visa and Amex are among companies that are stepping up their activities in Blockchain even while being lackadaisical or even critical of bitcoin. That makes many observers conclude that these established giants could take some sheen away from Bitcoin. Interestingly, many regulators and banks too have also taken the same stance—cold-shouldering bitcoin while embracing Blockchain. 

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