The main executives of Mastercard and Wells Fargo agreed that the blockchain technology has a long-term potential. But to date it has not been done.
Tim Sloan, Managing Director of Wells Fargo, and Ajaypal Banga, Executive Director of MasterCard, agreed that the potential of distributed record technology (DLT) has not yet paid off, but that there are still no clear cases of commercial use. The executives made their comments to CNBC at the Fintech Ideas Festival on Wednesday.
The technology has taken a long time to develop
The CEO of Wells Fargo emphasized that the technology has taken a long time to develop, pointing to a pilot blockchain program carried out between the bank and the Commonwealth Bank in Australia, in October 2016. Sloan emphasized that the pilot resulted in a single transaction, concluding that DLT would have more impact over time.
According to him if you go back a few years, you should have completely changed the industry only that’s not how it works.
The CEO of MasterCard stated that the blockchain technology has interesting possibilities. And it would be a bad idea to ignore it. Specifically, Banga described the potential of technology to improve the efficiency of supply chains and address problems related to counterfeit products. However, he also pointed out that a blockchain enabled business model has not been tested to date, claiming that they were just saying they did not know the business model, yet.
Both Mastercard and Wells Fargo have been actively exploring the benefits of blockchain technology, with MasterCard ranked as the third company in the world according to the number of blockchain patents filed. For its part, Wells Fargo entered the Forbes list of the 50 largest public companies that explore blockchain, in July 2018.
Accenture announced a collaboration with Mastercard
In October 2018, the CEO of global payment giant Visa, Al Kelly, argued that his main competitor, MasterCard, has to make more effort in terms of blockchain applications, since they are smaller than Visa.
Recently, the global professional services firm Accenture announced a collaboration with Mastercard to introduce a circular supply chain based on blockchain.
Also published on Medium.