Topic: BITCOIN IS BETTER THAN WESTERN UNION ? - page 56. (Read 70016 times)

Sending money internationally, or remittance, costs money. According to The World Bank, this costs an average of 7.99% of the amount sent. Using traditional payment methods like Western Union or wire transfers is often expensive. These companies make money by charging a percentage on the exchange rate, which is often invisible and also levitating high transfer fees to send or receive money.

Whereas, sending money using a Bitcoin-based platform is comparatively cheaper, as transmission fees in Bitcoin transactions towards miners are often very low.

So in long run, I think Bitcoin will win the competition!

But western unioncharges much fees to me when i exchange btc from a  china seller ..
From china to Pakistan.. I dont know and i stopped selling my btcs to him.

Well how many years does western union present at the market?Bitcoin has potencial to grow ,and it will as long as it become legat everywhere and achieve mainstream.Otherwise we will see bitcoin going no where besides the current place.

It's a great controversial topic where one can side with Bitcoin while the others can side with Western Union.

Whilst Bitcoin certainly has the rails to make payments better through it's decentralized way of confirming a transaction, WU/Money Gram on the other hand, has the network effect which makes it very difficult to penetrate at the moment.

Bitcoin buying/selling and remitting via Bitcoins is so minuscule right now, it doesn't even show up as a blip on the US$ 500 Billion per annum money transfer market.

From a transaction volume point of view, Bitcoin is almost a zero entity.

For Bitcoin to become more mainstream in remittance and to show up as a player, it would have to make a mark, even at 0.5% - this would amount to US$ 2.5 Billion worth of remittance transactions per year. Bitcoin is nowhere close to this number.

Legal & Regulatory issues aside, which are major issues in my opinion, the issue of on-boarding/off-boarding seems to be another important issue. While bitcoins may be sent across instantly the buying/selling onto Fiat and settlement across the border would still use SWIFT and this is a bottleneck.

Western Union and Money Gram are not complacent. They have a very unique perspective and insight towards remittances (in fact, I would argue they perhaps have the best data set on remittances than anyone else). WU/MG will implement whatever needs to be implemented to make their transactions go faster and cheaper, be it in Bitcoin, Ripple, their own proprietary payment protocol, etc.

For the time being, they are very comfortable where they are than where bitcoin is at the moment.

I recently experienced a overseas money transfer with bitcoin debit card at the receiving side and fiat to bitcoin exchange at the sending side and we saved considerable more with bitcoin comparing with our usual WU transfers. All the above, any-time and convenient are the extra benefits we enjoyed.

Its amazing to see some more information about it but,sending bitcoins to others will be better as the ratio should increase ,soo todays bitcoin may be loosing because the exchange ratio but usually the people that send money is to family savings and some to be spent .

Yeah Yeah Bitcoin will capture all people in world for money transaction medium, People working overseas would be get benefit because of Bitcoin transactions and It will reduce transaction price and speed than Forgein exchanges. Lets hope to reach BTC to worldwide.

yes,i'm sure everyone here will agree with this,if you search on google,you will find many reason why bitcoin better than western union. and also if you ask someone who have use western unon and bitcoin,i thik they will choose bitcoin is better.

Well if you use two bitcoin exchanges then you will end by paying high fees in these exchanges, if the other party accepts bitcoins then that would be the ideal situation, i think that bitcoin is better that western union because of low fee but not faster.

At present you need two bitcoin exchanges to send your money from one country to another. It will take some time to do.

if you really want to compare the final value receiver will get, pay the WU transaction fees from the money that you want to send
but in this case im agree to you

To move funds securely should not be free, I don't think anyone's ever suggested that. The only way it should be free is if you, yourself, are physically handing the funds over. In that situation, you take the risk of losing the funds upon yourself, and that in itself is enough of a fee. (Let's not get started on the taxes involved with that, though.)
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/western-union-rips-off-bitcoin-doesnt/
http://www.bitcoingroup.in/bitcoin-comparisions/why-sending-money-using-bitcoin-is-better-than-western-union/

totally agree

I prefer to use Bitcoin than western union but even with WU has its advantages and disadvantages, 1 is their shocking fees the more uo send more and bigger the fee is and that they should just make 1 fee regardless of the amount you send would be a lot better. Bitcoin send any amounts and little fees regardless of waht your sending. But with sending BTC it is final you cant recover your funds if sent wrong amount or sent to wrong address. If bitcoin had this method or some sort of security that allows you to pull coin back with  a central athuritity actioning this if allowed or not then would be good but then would be crazy for scammers.

local bitcoin has some absurd prices.  one should use another source to convert to local currency.  The real solution is in Western Union to actually use bitcoin.  They trade currencies in almost every country, handle almost every currency.  Bitcoin could provide WU huge cost reduction in internal transaction fees.

ok guys i just done a quick test to compare bitcoin vs WU

to send £1000 (GBP) to thailand

costs me £1004.90 (0.49%)

and the recipient will get 53609.24THB


now lets compare that to local bitcoins (fastest way to get bitcoins without lengthy registration process)
£1000 will get me 4.429679btc

4.429679btc will get me 52317.57THB (97.59% of the value WU would give)

so im sorry to say this.. although bitcoin suggests ' low/no fee's of ~3cent' .. the reality is the spread/spot prices when trying to exchange in and exchange out are 2.41% as oppose to WU's 0.49%.

though i love bitcoin, my income is 100% and my spending is 100% bitcoin for the last few years. i do have to keep my mind in the reality of the real world, and not the world of PR half truths.

so if you are going to talk about WU being crap, try not to say about the 'low fee' argument that makes bitcoin better.. because whether its hidden as exchange spread, or categorically advertised as a fee.. it still ends up costing the sender or recipient something no matter what buzz word you use.

so try to lead the the true benefits and not the wishy washy selective wording stuff..

Wester Union may keep leading the market against bitcoin,but we all know that bitcoin will end taking their costumers soon or later,as bitcoin achieves mainstream that will be possible to exchange anywhere the bitcoin into fiat saving a lot ,returning to the people the power of money.

I completely agree. Out of all the companies out there, I can't stand Western Union the most. Their horrendous fees are really something to talk about. Imagine how much money have poor people left to these people over all these years.

I don't think that Bitcoin needs to put anyone out of business to be successful, but Western Union, I wish really bad that we put out of business!

Western union is a pile of total crapshit. Their fees are unimaginable, and their only advantage over bitcoin is how widely it is used. Western union has had a while to spread, some bitcoin is relatively new. When bitcoin beats western union at this, then all western union users will stay flocking over to bitcoin like sheeple.

faster than 0 confirmation? i highly doubt, also bitcoin can already be used for purchasing many thing, the ony thing that is hindering the usage is the lazyness of people and the fact that they need first to buy it