Visa, MasterCard, WorldPay and others in the payments sector can relax: Bitcoin will remain a niche player and blockchain technology poses little risk, according to a new report from Credit Suisse, which has less comforting news for Swift.

In response to questions from investors about blockchain and its potential to disrupt traditional industries, Credit Suisse has put together a 135 page report pooling analysis on the impact the technology. On payments, the report acknowledges that a permissioned public ledger could remove the need for a central clearing house in the form of Visa and MasterCard.

However, the bank's analysts still see limited risk to these card schemes, arguing that the decision by the likes of Apple to tap into their rails, making the networks the guardians of the tokenization process, puts them in a strong position.