Unveiling the key challenges to achieve the breakthrough of blockchain: Insights from the payments industry

Abstract

The emergence of blockchain technology has led to an animated discussion among both researchers and practitioners about its future prospects. Similar to other upcoming technologies, in the foreground of the analysis are often the potential benefits of blockchain. Much less discussed are the challenges the technology must overcome before achieving breakthrough in traditional areas, such as the financial services sector. To close this gap, and to identify the challenges blockchain needs to overcome, we explore its impact in the payments industry, which represents a major pillar of banking and the cradle of blockchain. For this purpose, we performed a Delphi study and subsequently conducted a number of dedicated interviews. The findings enable us to delineate six key challenges that have to be tackled. Our study contributes to the literature on blockchain and has important practical implications as it indicates issues that should be addressed in order to foster its dissemination.