One in five large organisations will use digital currencies for payments, stored value, or collateral by 2024, according to analyst house Gartner.

Gartner’s report predicted this wider adoption of digital currencies will be partly driven by the “healthy” environment of service providers and solutions available to large enterprises that have already identified a specific use case for digital currencies.

Avivah Litan, distinguished vice president analyst in the Gartner IT practice, said: “Many large banks, payment platforms, institutional digital asset custodians and wallet providers have already done the heavy lifting in this area, which should provide large enterprises with a minimum of friction in deploying their own digital currency applications.”

Alexander Bant, chief of research in the Gartner Finance practice, said that additional factors that could make digital currency applications more attractive to chief financial officers (CFOs) in the next 12 to 24 months included hedging against high inflation, increased regulatory clarity, improvements in energy usage, and widespread adoption by employees, consumers, and suppliers.

The news comes after it was yesterday reported that JPMorgan Chase had partnered with Siemens to create a blockchain-based system for its payments.

“2022 is the year that we expect CFOs to rapidly up their knowledge on digital assets, currencies, and other blockchain applications,” said Alexander Bant. “When the chief executive and board start asking for the opinion of the CFO, they must have a point of view on the risks and points of differentiation for their organisation.”

He added: “We are starting to see some Fortune 500 companies map out scenarios for how they will respond if a country or supplier moved to doing business with only digital currency and what steps they would take as a result.”

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