Topic: Bitcoin remittances: a solution for migrant workers (Read 2129 times)

They are aiming for the 'regular' people, who are not even aware what is bitcoin and how it works.


There's another similar Philippine bitcoin remittance service, that allows withdrawals in bank ATMs:

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-firm-enables-remittance-withdrawals-450-philippine-bank-atms/

I guess this service would be used by people who don't have access to exchanges to sell their bitcoins. This service would act as the exchange as well.
Charging a fee for this service is okay, but the question is how much do they charge? If it is only a marginal improvement over traditional money transfer services, then there could be opportunities for other service providers to come in.

Yes, the agents would still need to transfer money from/to local bank and possibly to the exchange (not sure how it's organised on both ends). But if they manage to use bitcoin to replace the international transfers, and reduce the currency conversion costs that would probably be the crucial part, giving them the edge over standard services.

And apparently bitspark also provide bitcoin exchange services, so they may be able to further optimise/reduce costs of the BTC/fiat conversion part for their agents.

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/18021/bitcoin-and-cryptocurrency-exchange-bitspark-io-launches-securing-cyberport-tech-incubator-seed-capital/

https://www.bitspark.io/

I hope they'll provide some more details soon.

where I lived before the negative slang for white people was shark.  white people are a little like sharks. they are big, fat, and wherever they go they destroy anything in there. (plus sharks are one of the few animals that are kind of white)

as for the whole "there are places with no internet" thing. almost everywhere now has a signal even if it is a weak one.  if somebody doesn't have internet in the third world, it is probably because the cost of the service and/or hardware is just too high and they don't see how it will make their life better.  but in the next few years prices of hardware/service will go down quite a bit and utility will go up.  there will be herd boys in the middle of Mongolia in 5 years from now living with no electricity or running water, but they will be playing games on their old worn out smart phone charging it with an old worn out car battery. 

charging the phone is actually the cheap part, less than a dollar a year in electricity, and that is an iphone 5 that is offering high end performance, not exactly a phone that was designed for the third world needs. 

http://lifehacker.com/5948075/how-much-energy-a-smartphone-uses-in-a-year-and-what-it-means-for-your-budget

transferring money would still be necessary as the agents that receive cash fiat will need to deposit the funds to the bank to replenish their exchange account while the agents disbursing the cash will need to sell bitcoin and withdraw to their bank account in order to replenish their cash on hand. This will cause additional costs as customers will need to pay for the costs associated with the same transporting of cash plus the exchange spreads/trading fees that the agents incur

I assume Bitspark will just create payment system and operate through the network of registered agents (local merchants etc), so similar to WU (they also use independent agents).

Sure, the internal system of IOUs sounds like fastest and easiest solution, but what you're missing is they still need to send the physical cash and redistribute the funds adequately to all the agents to regulate the balance. So it is actually more complex and likely far more expensive.

Using BTC as transfer tool, the whole process is completed when the recipient gets the money. With the IOU system - it's not.

Also, internal system means single point of failure. I haven't use WU much, just few times in my life, but happened to me on 2 occasions when agents refused to take the order because 'system was down'.

As for the scam risk, it's probably very similar, assuming agents' verification process is the same. Fraudulent agent can deny that he ever received bitcoins, but he may just as well refuse the payment to the recipient.


I just used it as an example. Since there are many areas with no electricity (or even clean water) it's an overstatement to say that pretty much everyone in the world have access to the internet and smartphones.

The fact that 'there is internet in Ethiopia', doesn't mean that 100% of Ethiopians have access to it. There are still areas in Europe (not sure about US) with no (or very poor) mobile network coverage.


It's 'bitspark' 
Using 'shark' in any money/trust related business would be pretty bad marketing move

This is just adding an extra step. Unless each BitSpark agent is separate from all the others then there is no reason why BitSpark could not just have the money move internally just like Western Union does. However if each agent is independent then you would essentially be sending bitcoin to an unknown person with no real way of knowing if they can be trusted (and knowing how many bitcoin related scammers are out there, they probably cannot be).
If someone does not have access to electricity then I can't see how any company would be able to be setup to know when it is appropriate to disburse money to someone else.

imagine a cleaner/maid works in america and gets paid dollars. to send that to the Philippines. the intermediary needs to put it into a bank account and exchange it from dollars and into Philippine peso's. which is very cumbersome and costly to do on forex markets, and also very slow to deposit and withdrawbetween a US bank and a filopino bank. thats why western union usually keeps reserves and alot of databases to keep the balances of each office straight.
meaning not only large forex fee's bt the admin and security costs of looking after funds.

yet by utilizing bitcoin, anyone.. yes anyone can go to localbitcoins, sell the dollars for bitcoins. email the privkey to relatives in the Philippines and those relatives find a Filipino localbitcoin trader to swap bitcoins into Philippine peso's the same day.. with alot less fee's and delays or admin work.

bitshark seem to be doing this second scenario, avoiding the complex red tape of forex markets. and also professionalizing the localbitcoin swaps at both ends by hiding the 3 step process behind their own gateway..

i have not used bitshark but i see the positives of the business plan. but id ask everyone to do their due diligence and check they are a registered company etc before trusting them with funds.. and that goes for any business

I tried it once and it worked well.  I think this might be Bitcoins first real big in market.

This makes perfect sense. Bitspark just acts as an instant BTC/fiat exchange.

Sender gives $100 (+fee?) to the BitSpark agent -> agent sends $100 in BTC to another agent --> they convert to the local currency --> recipient gets $100 (equivalent)

Bitcoin is used as a transfer tool. The parties (sender, receiver) don't really have to know what's going on in the background.

I don't know how would that work on converting BTC to local currency, they'd need to either accept the risk of exchange rate changes, or have an option to 'lock' the rate.



I think you overestimate internet/smartphones accessibility in the poor countries. There are still wide areas where people have no access to electricity (or very limited).

This does not make much sense to me. Why would they "use" bitcoin but not make either party aware of it? Unless the receiver is vulnerable to exchange rate movements then bitcoin is not really being used. They are likely only saying they use bitcoin as a marketing ploy

Also much of the world (even in 3rd world countries) have internet access and smartphone access and I imagine that it would not be difficult to get a BTC ATM installed in places that tend to receive a lot of money from overseas

This seems like a good idea for poor people. They're the ones that always get screwed on money transfer fees. If you can send $5k or more you can wire for no fee. But $5 seems to be the lowest fee available for under $5k. It seems like migrant workers always have a cell phone (and in my area a 20 year old Toyota). A cell should be enough to use a service like this.

This is precisely why you don't advertise before you have an actual product, it's amazing how many companies which should know better do this.

There is/was a similar service for sending money to Ghana. I wonder whether they managed to get a lot of customers.

http://www.coindesk.com/beam-launches-cheap-rebittance-solution-ghana/

That kind of services are definitely a way to go.

This only works when recipient knows how to use bitcoin, has internet connection and has access to legit exchange, which can be a problem.

With BitSpark you don't even need to know what the bitcoin is to use it.

The problem is not every immigrant worker has Internet connection. But comparing with west union and bank wire transfer, this new company offers the lowest fee. if the company can win the customers' trust, then there is no reason to refuse such a good service.

There is no real reason to need to use their service to send money back "home" via bitcoin. All you need to do is buy bitcoin on an exchange then send it to an address that a family member controls in their home country then the family member can sell the bitcoin on an exchange and/or use it to buy goods/services

I always believe this is a very vast area to explore where bitcoin would certainly become very useful. For skill workers or professionals, that would not be an issue but for the rest, the main barrier when it comes to using bitcoin is that some of these workers are not so literate or having access to internet in foreign countries. What we need is a company to set up a service that acts as a middle person to facilitate the transfer.

Couple of Philippines based companies are seeing decent early traction using blockchain tech to move money between us and the Philippines. Hope it catches on fast

According to the Bitspark website, deposit and withdrawal with national currencies isn't available yet.