Cryptocurrencies revolutionize payment methods

You’re calmly browsing your favourite website when suddenly something calls your attention. The bright and shiny colours of an ad invite you to jump to the shop site, in which you’ll find a product you simply love. You just decided you absolutely need it. If there was any doubt, it fades away as soon as you check the price, which happens to be really a bargain. Such a temptation can’t be missed!

You have already chosen the model, colour and size that best fits your needs. There’s only one last step. It’s the one that lets the seller keep working, but for you it’s the most displeasing part: paying. And not only because of having to give away the money you worked so hard to earn.

Let’s face it: current payment methods aren’t precisely comfortable. Through the Internet you’ll basically find two ways, the one messier than the other. You can use your credit or debit card, as if you were on the high street, but in a slightly more complicated way: you’ll have to type the card number, the expiration date, the three digit safety code in the reverse, maybe you’ll have to get round another system depending on your bank… It isn’t simple at all. Of course, you can always ask your browser to store your data, but if you become the victim of a security hole, you can’t say you weren’t warned.

The other usual payment method are bank transfers. Extremely cumbersome, since you need to know the very long destination account number and repeat it without missing a single digit; otherwise, who knows where will your money end up. Apart from that, the process generally isn’t fast; transfers can take up to several days to complete. It’s not unusual, either, that the bank decides to charge you commissions Sometimes they’re the only available option, but they’re absolutely not recommended.

Alternatives to the traditional online payment methods

In the last few years several private companies have developed initiatives which try to solve, with more or less success, this kind of issues. Due to its popularity PayPal is worth mentioning. It’s a quick and reliable method… but it has its disadvantages, such as the need to be linked to a credit card in order to handle large amounts of money, or, in international affairs, the use of their own exchange rates, which often are somewhat random and not very convenient for the user.

Google and Apple have also launched their own systems, which both have “Pay” as a surname. They’re specifically designed to be used on their mobile devices, namely Android for the former, iOS for the latter. Their main drawback is that they still aren’t available in many locations around the world. In fact, most countries in Latin America can’t enjoy this service yet.

But there is another alternative which, due to its features, will be a game changer in the near future for the payment method universe. We’re speaking about cryptocurrencies, or virtual currencies. That means currencies which only exist on a virtual environment, not on the physical one; namely, all kind of operations can be performed with them on the Internet, but you won’t have to handle paper notes nor will your pockets get filled with scrap metal.

The fact of being specifically conceived for the net makes them ideal as a means of online payment. All procedures with them are extremely fast, up to the point that a transfer to any part of the world can be completed in just a few seconds, no matter the real physical distance among people involved. Besides, cryptocurrencies are totally decentralized, which means there is no formal institution backing and managing them, but the users themselves are to determine their value depending on the transactions they perform with them. Its listed value will rarely depend on the economic fluctuations of any government.

Cryptocurrencies add great advantages to online payments

Combining these two factors we find that cryptocurrencies are ideal, for example, to purchase in international shops products that may be unavailable in our local market. This payment method will make it easier for our money to keep its value abroad and will also ease bureaucracy. Anyway, if ever needed, we can always easily turn cryptocurrencies back into fiat money, that is, euros, dollars or any other currency we can find on the street.

Most users have another major concern when moving their money all around the Internet: safety. It must be recognized that the many pieces of news we can find about online scams and frauds are quite scary, and that this is the reason for traditional paying means to have such a lot of safety measures, which are needed but still disturbing. However, cryptocurrencies include in their own core a technology that makes them essentially immune to any attack.

The system is known as “blockchain”. In brief, it works like this: all operations performed with cryptocurrencies are written down in a block on the log. But those blocks are interconnected forming a chain, in such a way that one can’t be modified or deleted without affecting the previous and the following ones. Doing so, a maximum level of safety is achieved and also any incidence can be efficiently tracked.

We at Davies recommend you to keep an eye on the development of this system, which will surely change completely the world of online paying methods. More and more businesses are joining the trend and accepting cryptocurrencies like any other means. Would you like to have a deeper knowledge of how it all works? Follow our blog and ask us any question you may have!