Visa Inc. V and MasterCard Inc. MA, which processed $7.4 trillion in purchases last year, are among leading payments networks that devote thousands of words in filings to every perceived threat to their business. “Bitcoin” isn’t one of them.“I’m a bit skeptical,” said Discover Financial Services DFS Chief Executive Officer David Nelms, who runs the fourth-biggest U.S. network after Visa, MasterCard and American Express Co. AXP Other things pose “a lot more potential threats or opportunities than Bitcoin,” he said. Investors in the digital currency are looking to capture some of the four firms’ combined $61.3 billion in annual revenue and loosen their decades-long grip on handling electronic payments. While Bitcoin can buy a widening array of goods and services, regulatory scrutiny and technical glitches have raised questions about whether it will continue to catch on. That’s why executives at the biggest payment firms — watching Bitcoin developments closely — show little worry, saying their technology is safer, more reliable and easier for consumers.“Protection and trust are crucial to us and our card members and merchants,” Dan Schulman, president for enterprise growth at American Express and former CEO of Priceline.com Inc., said in an interview at the lender’s New York headquarters. “We don’t believe that is offered by crypto-currencies today.”

Bitcoin, introduced in 2008 by a programmer or group of programmers under the name Satoshi Nakamoto, has no central issuing authority and uses a public ledger to verify transactions that are authenticated by cryptographic signatures. Daily Bitcoin transaction volume climbed to more than $58 million on Feb. 20 from about $6.9 million a year earlier, according to data from Blockchain.info, which provides online wallets for digital currencies. That’s less than 0.3 percent of the daily purchases processed by Visa and MasterCard, which also handled $3.7 trillion in cash disbursements last year.

via Bitcoin Seen as Little Threat to Payments Firms – Bloomberg.