The auditing firm Deloitte is planning to allow their staffs to pay for lunch using a mobile Bitcoin (BTC) wallet. Luxembourg Times reported that the auditing firm of the “Big Four” was only testing to “see how the audit giant could use the cryptocurrency,” by allowing Bitcoin wallet usage in their canteens.
Bitcoin has often been criticized for being exceedingly slow for small or micropayments (such as purchasing lunch) because transactions are “finalized” only after the network verifies them six times. Implying that, those transactions have gone six blocks deep inside the blockchain.
The confirmation time for a single Bitcoin transaction is 8.2 minutes; which makes a six- blocks transaction as long as 48+ minutes.
Therefore, if Deloitte staffs pay for their lunch using bitcoins, they will have to wait in the queues for a considerable amount of time for their payments to be ‘finalized’ by the network, or Deloitte’s canteen has to accept transactions with “zero-confirmation” (which is a very unlikely situation).
A partner at the strategy regulatory and corporate finance department of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, Laurent Collet, stated:
“We think it’s good to have our employees assess this new technology.”
Collet added that the organization has no future-plans to let their clients pay for their services via Bitcoin. He has also declared that the firm was planning to use blockchain technology and distributed ledger technology (DLT) in its activities, like fund management, to enable moving funds faster. It would also make audits easier and would lessen middlemen dependency.
Collet announced:
“This is where we focus our attention right now in linking this new technology with the needs of the Luxembourg industry.”
While Deloitte is not ready to implement Bitcoin as a payment option, one of the other “Big Four,” PwC’s Luxembourg branch, is going to accept Bitcoin payments for its services, starting from October.
PwC Luxembourg has partnered up with a regional regulated exchange for the purpose. It stated that it recognizes Bitcoin as the first Peer-to-Peer payment system that cannot be jeopardized and is decentralized; so, it is very convenient for their usage.
According to a paper, by Grayscale, there are over 100,000 organizations globally, which have already implemented Bitcoin as a means of payment, and more are joining every day.
An economist of the Bank for International Settlements has also recommended new measures for managing financial risks through the distributed ledger technology. As per the latest bitcoin news, in the future, the number of Bitcoin-accepting organizations is expected to increase considerably.