David Whiteing of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia 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.

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.