Bitcoin will have to evolve to be regulated and adopted by the world's financial systems, believes Ann Cairns, the president of international markets at MasterCard.

Digital currencies will become a part of the world's financial system and some of them are already regulated currencies in various countries around the world, MasterCard chief Ann Cairns told IBTimes. Cairns forecasts that economies will choose to regulate digital currencies once they start to use them for transferring funds on a large scale. In terms of regulation, bitcoin will have to undergo changes in order to have massive global adoption, she said.

At the moment bitcoin is not convenient for the shopping system, Cairns believes. It is too slow – a single transaction may take quite a few minutes. This time scale would be not appropriate in certain situations such as, for example, in train stations, where instantaneous processing is essential.

In June MasterCard published a four-page document in response to the UK Treasury’s call for information on digital currencies, where the payment giant argued that digital currencies should be subject to certain regulatory actions in order to grow and compete with more established forms of electronic payment.

A bitcoin app OneBit, enabling payments with any credit card via NFC, was developed at the MasterCard Hackathon this year. CoinFox reported earlier that Bit-X announced it would issue MasterCard denominated in bitcoin. A few days later CCEDK announced its plan to launch bitcoin-denominated debit MasterCard in June.

Aliona Chapel