CEO of the US financial services company Western Union (NYSE:WU), Hikmet Ersek, has said that people shouldn’t expect to see cryptocurrency transfer support any time soon.
Ersek, who spoke at Economic Club of New York on Wednesday morning, had said that customers preferred to pay in fiat currency, rather than digital currency.
According to an article from MarketWatch, Ersek had this to say in regards to cryptocurrency usage:
“The consumers tell us what they want…people aren’t paying their hospital bills in cryptos.”
The CEO added that he also believes that central banks will be “unlikely to give up control over their local tender to shift to a digital and decentralized alternative” and that “nations are built on flags, constitutions, borders, and currencies.”
Western Union
Although Western Union has distanced themselves from cryptocurrency, the company has previously expressed interest in blockchain technology.
In a February 2018 article from Bloomberg, Ersek had said that Western Union was “looking especially in the processing settlement and working capital optimization” and “also in the regulation part, on the compliance part on the blockchain capabilities.”
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The company had said that they would be doing tests with Ripple’s blockchain technology for faster money transfers using Ripple’s XRP cryptocurrency.
In a statement to Bloomberg in the same February article, Ripple confirmed that they had been working with Western Union:
“We’ve been testing different products with Western Union for a while. We’re excited about our work towards a pilot implementation of xRapid, which uses XRP in payment flows.”
Shares of Western Union have gone down nearly 0.15% on Thursday and, as of 3:20 pm EDT, was hovering near a value of $20.75 USD.
The company closed at a shared value of $20.78 on Wednesday.
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