Topic: analogy: the internet is to Minitel, what bitcoin is to Giro transfers (Read 689 times)

The analogy is this: the internet is to the French minitel system, what bitcoin is to the Giro bank transfer system.

In europe, the Giro system allows people to easily transfer money between bank accounts.  It is used person-to-person and also for e-payment of bills.   You have a payment address, similar to a bitcoin address, and you can give that to someone and they can transfer money to that address.   Checks are obsolete.

The modern Giro system is an important improvement over paper checks, but still very much a creature of the centralized banking system.  Minitel had many of the same features the early internet had, and predated wide adoption of the internet, but it was still very much a centralized system managed by the large telecoms.    Giro payments predate and have similar features to bitcoin, but are a centralized system managed by the large banks.

This quote sums up how Giro is better then the checking system in the USA, and are conceptually more similar in use to bitcoin:

"Direct deposit systems such as those in common use in North America, by contrast, require the recipient's explicit approval, typically provided by filling out form. It is also not generally possible to transfer funds directly to another, third party bank account without first paying a significant wire transfer fee nor without visiting the bank in person."

The value of this analogy is that one can look at how Giro transfers are used, and imagine them being replaced by bitcoin.  The advantage over Giro transfer is not lower fees, but  instead, like internet vs. Minitel, more innovation due to the lack of centralized control by large monopolistic institutions (large banks or telecoms).

I would love to know if anyone has created a Giro to/from bitcoin gateway in any of the countries that use Giro.  I wonder what the regulatory hurdles would be.   

Ideally one could create a simple gateway where someone could type in a third party Giro payment number and receives a bitcoin address.  Any payments to that address would be converted to local currency and become Giro deposits to the matching bank account.   Conversely, someone could enter a bitcoin address, and the gateway would create a Giro address that would convert and transfer any local currency payed to the specified bitcoin address.