Discover Financial and American Express Don't See Bitcoin as a Threat

The head honchos of the third and fourth biggest payment networks in the United States are coming forward with their views of bitcoin from a business sense, and the long story short is that they simply don’t see it as a threat.

‘I’m a bit skeptical,” Discover Financial Services CEO David Nelms said to Bloomberg. Nelms said there is “a lot more potential threats or opportunities than Bitcoin.”

The company runs the fourth largest payment network in the U.S. behind American Express, who also feels that bitcoin isn’t much of an issue.

“Protection and trust are crucial to us and our card members and merchants,” said Dan Schulman (also to Bloomberg), president for enterprise growth at AMEX (and also the former CEO of Priceline.com. “We don’t believe that is offered by crypto-currencies today.”

Of course, one wouldn’t expect such large traditional payment processors to be in support of bitcoin, but alas, there you have it.

The fact of the matter is that the concept of bitcoin goes against what these two companies do, eliminating the middleman and putting the user in full control. For merchants the benefits are even greater — allowing them to accept payments without a hefty cut taken by the likes of VISA, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.

The sender pays a small fee, which goes to support the network and keep miners, well, mining.

Do you think AMEX and Discover will be changing their views down the line?