Barclays has been in discussions with regulators and financial technology ('fintech') firms about bringing cryptocurrencies like bitcoin "into play", the bank's UK chief executive told CNBC. Ashok Vaswani revealed that the banking giant has met with Britain's Financial Conduct Authority watchdog to talk about how to make bitcoin safe in response to a question about whether Barclays could support bitcoin. "We have … gone with the fintechs to the FCA to talk about how we could bring, the equivalent of bitcoin, not necessarily bitcoin, but cryptocurrencies into play," Vaswani told CNBC at the Money 20/20 fintech conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Trade groups representing over 5000 European savings and co-operative banks have called on the European Banking Authority to reject Commission amendments to the revised Payment Services Directive which would require banks to provide a fall-back interface to screen-scraping technology for third party access to consumer bank data, reports Finextra. The suggestion has led to an uproar among mature fintech startups, who have lobbied hard for a reversal of the decision, claiming that the reforms will provide banks with the means to control what data is shared, putting new entrants at a disadvantage.