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David Whiteing of CBA Says Digital Currency Tech is where the future of payments is heading

David Whiteing, the CIO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia or CBA which will soon launch Ripple technology for its subsidiaries to transfer payments between them, says that digital currency technology is where the future of payments is heading. Ripple, a peer-to-peer, distributed payments network supports both cryptocurrency and fiat currency.

Built on an open source Internet protocol called Ripple Transaction Protocol, Ripple according to David Whiteing has huge potential. Similarly, he says that Bitcoin is a protocol which is now being replicated by non-asset based vendors like Ripple and others. He says that he sees huge potential in the technology and the bank has a role to play in that as well.

Whiteing also admitted that Ripple being a technology with huge potential has also invited their attention and they have in fact, done a whole bunch of experiments with it. He also declared that they are about to launch using Ripple as a means to transfer payments between their subsidiaries to make things easier for their customers.

Nonetheless, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s announcement that it will use Ripple technology to facilitate payments between its subsidiaries, describing distributed protocols as “the way of the future” gives hope for Bitcoiners. It will be the second such bank after Germany’s Fidor that became the first bank.

Fidor had integrated Ripple’s protocol into its payments infrastructure, with two US banks, CBW Bank and Cross River Bank, following suit four months later. Nonetheless, as Whiteing sees no reason why bank accounts could not be used to store fiat money, cryptocurrencies and other assets like store loyalty points in the future, moving ahead with the project was priority.

Whiteing says:

“Bitcoin is a protocol which is now being replicated by non-asset based vendors like Ripple and others. We absolutely see that’s where it’s going to go. The bank has a role to play in that. The idea is to test in a controlled environment what a bank-to-bank internal transfer might look like using crypto rather than existing payment providers."

He ensuring that the testing remains internal within Commonwealth Bank Group and continues to comply with all legal and regulatory requirements. Thus, it looks the decision to use Ripple for payments between subsidiaries remains experimental; however, the Commonwealth Bank’s sheer size makes its announcement a valuable decision.

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