What do you think the future of payments will look like—will it run on the Ripple protocol or on upgraded versions of existing systems from the 1970s?

Payments will be just that payment. Be it Dollars or Bitcoins or some other form of futuristic credit. The rails on which they would run, is inherently tied in to the TCP/IP protocol and the evolving protocols like Ripple and Bitcoin. Whether or not the future would be entirely on Ripple or something else, remains to be seen.

Banks and Regulators still have a lot of say in this. For over 30+ years we have not been able to adopt or change the SMTP protocol, despite all its flaws and abuse. We feel its good enough and keep adding layers around it and app controls on the content, but the underlying protocol remains the same. The payments protocol of today was not designed for the small-value payment, micro-payments (sub-decimal), cross-border payments or digital payments, yet we still continue to piggyback on it till such time, we see anchor players gravitating towards it.

The 1970s payment protocols in my opinion have had their day, we are, today (as we speak) in the transitionary phase, which will probably last for a decade or so, before the entire industry gravitates towards the newer, more efficient and pragmatic payments protocols that society today demands.