As the popularity of bitcoin increased, it started appearing as a threat to the conventional banking industry. The threat combined with a lack of clarity regarding bitcoin regulations has got many banks across the world refusing their services to bitcoin based businesses and bitcoin users. As the bitcoin adoption has still not crossed the threshold, people are forced to use traditional banking services to complement their bitcoin transactions.
There have been many instances in the past where banks have frozen their customers’ bank accounts for dealing with bitcoin. Even many bitcoin companies have been refused services by banks across the world, while those with existing accounts were forced to look for other bankers. These instances have bred scepticism among the bitcoin community regarding the traditional banking sector.
ING bank was recently accused of blocking customer transactions meant for procuring bitcoins. When the customers took to twitter, ING group’s social media team made a further mess of it by saying that bitcoin transactions from company accounts with ING is not possible due to security reasons. The conversation on twitter elicited a strong response from the bitcoin community who started questioning the validity of the bank’s actions.
With no sign of an end to this argument, ING Group released a retraction statement clarifying its stance on bitcoin. According to the statement, ING is not stopping any bitcoin transactions, and it is not against any banking policy followed by the bank. Further, ING circulated the same on its twitter channel as well.
ING has been actively following the cryptocurrency sector. Last month, ING Bank in Amsterdam, Netherlands hosted the Dutch Bitcoin Congress. During the same event, the company had announced that their tech teams are working on creating a clone of Ripple network for their use.
In the past few months, banks have realized the potential of Blockchain technology and they are exploring ways to incorporate it into their everyday operations to enable faster, cheaper money transfers between branches and across borders.