Silicon Valley may be on target to stop credit-card hacking, according to multiple reports on social media.
The infamous hack over the holiday-shopping season may have involved more than 100 million shoppers, across a wide swath of retailers.
The problem with debit- and credit-card technology is that, while effective, it is very slow, inefficient — and vulnerable to hacks and cyberattacks.
The crypto-currency bitcoin, though it has many problems of its own, could resolve a number of the issues the outdated payment technology has struggled to overcome.
According to a source who recently spoke with one of the heads of Google Wallet, Sridhar Ramaswamy, the company could be working on adding bitcoin to its payment system.
In fact, Google Wallet — the search giant’s smartphone banking app — is now asking users if they are interested in being able to use bitcoin as a payment option.
Analysts think that the digital currency’s future lies in the payments business, a $500 billion industry for traditional financial institutions like JPMorgan and Visa, according to Benzinga.
Major companies like Overstock.com have been accepting bitcoin as payment, and companies like Zynga, eBay and Paypal have been following suit.
On Thursday in Davos, Switzerland, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew gave the bitcoin a nod of approval by saying it’s a “phenomenon,” but he also questioned warned that bitcoin’s “anonymous form of transaction … offers places for people to hide.”
“From the government’s perspective, we have to make sure [bitcoin] does not become an avenue to funding illegal activities or to funding activities that have malign purposes, like terrorist activities,” Lew warned.