Are Credit Card Companies Feeling the Heat from Bitcoin?

Credit card companies seem to be finally coming around to the reality that digital currencies aren’t going away any time soon.

A recent post on reddit sheds some light on how far American Express is willing to go to size up the threat posed by cryptocurrencies to their business through the web. Apparently, a corporate account holder received a call- about digital currencies of all things.

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They posed the following 4 questions:

• Does your firm conduct business related to electronic currencies of any type?
• Does your firm accept payment for any type of digital currency service and/or convert fiat currencies into digital currencies on behalf of your customers?
• Does your firm use any digital currency to transfer money across international boundaries?
• Is your AmEx account ever used as a source of funds for converting to digital currencies?

Either they are making a lame effort to ensure security and compliance- in which case there are more discreet ways of going about it- or more likely, trying to gauge the interest from their vital clientele into something that can eventually wipe out their revenue from high fees.

It is worth noting that the whole notion of P2P payments- those conveniently handled via bitcoins- was previously attempted by AMEX themselves through their introduction of Serve. AMEX, more than other credit cards, may have cause for concern.