Barclays is set to become the first UK bank to officially accept payments in Bitcoin, as reported in The Sunday Times.
The multinational banking and financial services company announced recently that it is set to become the first bank in the United Kingdom to start accepting Bitcoin as a payment method. Barclays announced that they could start experimenting with Bitcoin as early as by the end of this year.
Stating that Bitcoin has the potential to change financial services, Barclays revealed that it has entered into a partnership with an undisclosed Bitcoin exchange. They also revealed that they have been conducting tests and experiments into Bitcoin in different labs of London as well in collaboration with some start-ups. The aim to go into collaboration with the cryptographic currency is to allow people to donate to charities in the digital currency.
In a statement to The Sunday Times, Barclays’s chief design and digital officer Derek White said that:
The UK-based multinational banking and financial services firm was taking this step in order to enable charities accept the digital currency of bitcoin.
This initiative taken by Barclays will surely open a lot of doors for the customers as well as everyone else. It has been reported that David Cameron is taking a bitcoin provider to south-east Asia on a British trade mission later this month. Even UBS is looking into tapping into the potential of bitcoin as it is running experiments on block chain, the database that keeps records of all bitcoin transactions.
Update from Barclays:
… Barclays is not accepting or holding any Bitcoin as some outlets have suggested. No Bitcoin is travelling through Barclays systems. We are working with some charity clients in a proof of concept to understand how Bitcoin payments might help with their fund raising and fund disbursement needs.
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