Tag Archives: payment

Blockchain Revolutionizing Banking

How Blockchain Technology is Changing the Banking Industry Forever

By far the biggest threat to banking in, well, living memory, has been blockchain technology. More specifically, cryptocurrency, but we’ll focus on the technology as a whole since this is what has been driving the movement.

All the tech companies in the world have been using it, including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, and a vast number of FinTech services, which is why it’s being seen as such a threat to traditional banks, but why is this happening?

What’s so important about blockchain?

In today’s post, we’re going to explore how and why blockchain technology is making such a big difference to the traditional banking format, and how the future of this industry is looking.

How Blockchain Technology is Changing Payments

First and foremost, and by far the biggest form of change that blockchain is bringing into the world, is how financial payments are made and the way modern-day payment systems work. Whereas traditional banks can take a few working days to make a payment, meaning some international payments can take a very long time, blockchain payments are instant.

Since all you need is an internet connection to make the transaction, most will be handled and completed in a matter of minutes. These transactions can happen across borders to anywhere in the world, are extremely secure (especially when compared to traditional methods) and happen pseudoanonymously.

Due to the nature of blockchain technology, the costs involved in these transactions are usually very small, typically only several cents per transaction. This means that sending money across to the other side of the world is far cheaper than traditional wire companies, such as Visa or Western Union.

In the same way, remittances are also changing. Whereas overseas remittances are expensive and long-winded, with high processing times and the fact the money can be stolen, taxed, or subject to legal issues along the way, a blockchain process basically eradicates all these issues. There are dozens of companies already set up and operating to offer these services.

The Way Account Managing and Deposits are Handled

In the traditional way the world works, consumers tend to use banks to hold money in either their savings or checking accounts. Then, the bank will loan out the money being held to make money on top of the money you’re saving, and the cycle continues. This means when you look into your bank account, much of the money you have isn’t actually being held by the bank, but instead is out in other people’s accounts as loans.

If every customer of a bank went to the bank and withdrew everything they had, the bank would collapse. It’s a very fragile system that many consumers are unaware of. However, while this system isn’t going to change any time soon, blockchain technology can make the management of this system far more effective.

Due to the benefits that blockchain technology provides, these account ledgers are far more secure, far more reliable, and far more accessible. This means banks can accurately manage their ledgers to ensure that they aren’t taking out too many loans and will actively help reduce the risk of bank run, or the system crumbling.

A Reduction in Fraud

Fraud has always been a problem in the financial industry, and it costs people around the world billions of dollars every single year. However, for the similar benefits, we’ve spoken about above, blockchain is making things far more secure.

Since the vast majority of traditional banks are set up and organised around a centralised system, malicious people can target the centralised system to commit the acts of fraud. While there have been many measures to make the system as secure as possible, this isn’t fall-proof, and statistics show around 45% of all financial institutions are prone to fraud attempts.

Blockchain is a decentralised system, which means it’s everywhere and nowhere at the same time, which makes it incredibly difficult to fraud and theft to take place. There’s no single point of access like there is with a centralised banking system and trying to get into such a system means diving into layer upon layer of encryption, all spread out in hundreds of thousands of locations.

What’s more, every single change that takes place on the ledge is capable of being seen by every other person and system that has access to the ledger. This means if any fraudulent activity takes place, everyone can see it instantly and correct it. This will help protect people’s money and keep the system afloat.

Katherine Rundell is a finance writer at Academic Writing Services and Essay Writing Services. She writes about blockchain and banking and aims to help the world get educated about finances in a time where they can seem so out of control.

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Visa will test the Blockchain

visa_will_test_the_blockchain

Visa will test the Blockchain

London payment giant Visa will test the blockchain to improve interbank payments. 
In fact, Visa Europe Collab announced today that its innovation lab started to test the distributed ledger with BTL Group.
Together the companies will try to explore how the blockchain and smart contracts can be useful for transactions among banks.
In the press release, co-founder of Visa Europe Collab, Hendrik Kleinsmiede, explained that the two partners wants European banks to join their program to use the technology for live payments.
“We’ll work closely together on the development and implementation of the PoC, ensuring that all participants come away with new knowledge and insight into the role that the blockchain could play in interbank settlements in the future.”
According to an article published on the Financial Times, Visa and BTL will try to finish the project within 100 days.
This is not the first project that sees Visa Europe Collab using the blockchain.

In July, Visa revealed a micropayments trial and a project to extend the reach of traditional payments.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

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Switzerland to accept Bitcoin for Public Services

Zug to accept Bitcoin

Zug, city ubicated in Switzerland, announced it will accept bitcoin payments for public services.
This is a pilot project to test the efficiency of the digital currency. This test will start on July 1st and will continue for the whole year.
Zug was probably chosen because it is the Swiss financial centre that has a good reputation for its low taxes.
This project appeared on the official website of Zug. Here the initiative is described as a way to test the bitcoin use for public obligations that cost 200 francs, or almost 0.44 BTC at the moment.
An official press release of this Switzerland city comments:
“The pilot project of the city government is initially limited to 200 francs on chargeable services the residents of the city train. The end of 2016 we will conduct an analysis of lessons learned. Then…the city council will decide if bitcoins and most other digital currencies are to be accepted as payment for other urban services in the future.”

Will this idea succeed?

This idea is not so new, as several cities and states have tested this method of payment during the last years, but it didn’t succeed.
Also, it is important to remember that Switzerland has lots of startups in its country: for example Xapo, ShapeShift and Monetas are located in Zug.

The city mayor is very upbeat

The city mayor Dolfi Müller commented in a post:
“We want to express our openness to new technologies and expressed early on your own experiences. And we will invite to exchange ideas with the City Council FinTech companies in the region train. Our goal is to meet their needs for optimal development in our living and economic environment in more detail.”
 

Multicurrencies Wallet – Open yours for free

To buy and spend your digital currencies, you may need a new wallet where you can store your bitcoin, for example.
On HolyTransaction wallet you can hold several cryptocurrencies including Ethereum, Litecoin, Blackcoin, etc.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
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How to study with Bitcoin payments

Pay with Bitcoin at Cevro University in Prague

Bitcoin at University

From now on students from all around the world can pay with bitcoin for their university – if they decide to move in Prague.
In fact, the CEVRO Institute University in Prague has announced that it will accept bitcoin among their allowed methods of payment.
Recently the Greek University of Nicosia, Draper University of California, the University of Cumbria and King’s College in the UK started to accept the cryptocurrency.

Why in Prague

The University rector Josef Šíma explained to Cointelegraph:
“As a first school in the Czech Republic we have opened unique Oxford style PPE (Philosophy, Politics, Economics) taught by a team of Czech and foreign professors in English and accepted many foreign students from US and Canada to India and China. One of them asked about the possibility to pay his tuition in bitcoin. And because we have hosted in past several lectures and conferences about this exciting new phenomenon and as a part of the PPE, and we will have courses dealing with alternative monetary schemes, free banking and cryptocurrencies, it was a really easy decision.”
The Prague University, in fact, was the first university to create the PPE class to allow its students to study the connections between Bitcoin and politics, philosophy and economy.
Fees in bitcoin will be calculated based on the current bitcoin price.

Bitcoin worldwide recognition

The acceptance of bitcoin by public institutions could be an important step for the recognition and the increase in popularity of Bitcoin.
We do not want merely to teach about the beauty of markets, modern technologies and innovation, we want to be innovators ourselves! We want to actively use most modern technologies and offer our students new opportunities which technologies made available” Šíma explained.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio
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Visa is working on a secure and scalable Blockchain

The American multinational financial services corporation Visa annonuced its “secure and scalable” blockchain project.
To do so, Visa opened a position for software engineers who have to “explore and develop technologies that are critical to the payments industry in the future”, as stated in the job advertisement.
visa, blockchain, job, job position, scalable blockchain

Job Description

The researches will cover three key areas: data analytics, security and future of payments, so the team will work on develop a sort of proof-of-concept for the Visa blockchain network.

 

“Working on Future of Payment research at Visa is a unique opportunity at a time when the payments industry is undergoing a digital transformation with data as a critical differentiator. We offer you the opportunity to be at the center of innovation in the payments industry and unleash the power Visa technologies and massive data in innovating the future of payment concept.”

 

The perfect candidates must have programming experience, cryptography and “competency in data structures, algorithms and software design optimized for building highly distributed and parallelized systems”. 

 

Visa partners with Chain

Some months ago, Chain raised $30 million in a new venture funding, drawing funds from some financial companies including Visa.
Chain is a a blockchain developer platform that serves an enterprise market.

The blockchain is no longer a choice

Previously, on December 2015, Visa Europe stated that “the blockchain is no longer a choice”.
In an interesting blog post entitled “Why 2015 was the year of payments”, in fact, they commented on financial technologies including the subject of digital currencies, by saying:

 

“2015 has turned blockchain into something the industry has to live with. It is no longer a choice anymore. Recent news speculating about the identity of its creator and the formalisation of virtual money as a commodity just makes it more real than ever before.”

 

To know more about Visa perspective on the blockchain, you can read the full post here.

Open your free digital wallet here to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.

Amelia Tomasicchio