The Western Union company, the world’s largest money transfer service, has developed and patented a method to increase the reliability of electronic payments. Relevant information on 6 July published by the American Bureau for registration of patents and trademarks. The company filed a patent application in December 2016.
Among other things, the authors of the concept propose to use biometric verification system, which will allow senders to authorize payment of all transactions. To confirm the identity with the help of the voice, scanning fingerprints or the iris of the eye.
According to the patent, the system is conceived as a universal tool that can interact with most electronic networks. The document has clarified that “in certain variants of implementation of the ideas of electronic payment the network may be a network of cryptocurrency: bitcoin, litecoin or Peercoin” (do not forget that the application was filed in 2016).
The document further stated:
Thus, in certain embodiments of the implementation of the idea of an electronic network of money transfers can be structured in such a way that will support and make transfers of different currencies, including traditional and/or digital currency, centralized and/or decentralized currency, cryptocurrencies, or other means of exchange (namely, credit cards, gift cards or certificates, points under the assessment system, etc.) between the client devices and/or external systems in different areas, regions or jurisdictions.
It is noteworthy that the application is missing any reference XRP — cryptocurrency, which its proponents consider a unique tool for companies that provide services monetary intermediation, such as Western Union and other financial institutions.
This does not mean that Western Union did not analyze XRP and its capabilities. This year the company confirmed that it has signed a partnership agreement with the blockchain startup Ripple to carry out trial integration of XRP in their payment flows. Recently, however, the head of Western Union, Hikmet Ersek said that the first results of the experiment he was not impressed:
We are constantly criticized the fact that Western Union is unprofitable, etc., but in the tests we did not see the XRP somehow contributed to economic efficiency. The difficulty is that payments remain too expensive.
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