Bitcoin Forum

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article9067283.ece/alternates/w620/RTX17587.jpg

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/bitcoin-is-being-used-by-african-migrant-workers-to-send-money-home-10098169.html


Migrant African workers are increasingly turning to bitcoin to send money home.

BitPesa, a service that allows bitcoins to be transferred to Kenya and Ghana for a flat fee of 3 per cent, said its user base is growing by 60 per cent month-on-month. Elizabeth Rossiello, chief executive of BitPesa, told the BBC that a shortage of payment options in Africa is driving bitcoin use.

It’s also cheaper: that 3 per cent fee contrasts sharply with an average 12.3 per cent paid to money transmitters by Africans living abroad, according to figures by the Overseas Development Institute. The ODI said that total annual fees to money transmitters amount to $1.4 billion.

In some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, MoneyGram and Western Union control 50 per cent of the remittance market while credit cards are available to less than 3 per cent of the population. Other web solutions like PayPal are not widespread and can also be expensive. Bank transfers are no better – they can be two the three times as expensive as other countries.

Africa is fertile ground for bitcoin. It has history with mobile money services that allow users to pay for good using a mobile phone as an alternative to cash or cards. A mobile money service called M-Pesa is now so widespread in Kenya that almost 70 per cent of the volume of all national payments is made through the service.

Toby Shapshak, a technology journalist, said that M-Pesa has become a financial institution in its own right. “You can pay school fees, you can buy groceries, I’m told you can even bribe customs officials using MPesa. The most important thing is that you can do it on the most basic of cell phone because Africa isn’t a smart phone continent yet,” Shapshak told the Guardian.

Bitcoin works with this local economy. Once it is received by a transmitter like BitPesa it can be converted into M-Pesa in Kenyan shillings.

While bitcoin is on the rise, liquidity might still be a problem. As a commodity, can also be subject to greater volatility than currencies, though remittance companies say they combat this by immediately converting transfers.

Transparency can also be an issue. Bitcoin users store a record on their computer of where every bitcoin is spent that acts as a virtual ledger – but the record does not show the identity of users. “From a law enforcement perspective, the danger is that the anonymity makes it an attractive proposition for criminals to use in terms of hiding the money trail we would use to get evidence against them,” Terence Chua, Singapore's deputy public prosecutor, told the Guardian.

Is The Guardian citing a prosecutor from a country that hands out death penalties for victimless crimes as a way of saying that Bitcoin should be more anonymous than it is?

All these people that are fucked by day 0 because of the bad luck of being born on a shithole of a country deserve to do better and Bitcoin is finally a way to give these people a realistic chance at generating wealth, specially when blockchain is accessible through SMS soon.
It will be huge. Just imagine, faucets alone will be great for all these people living in severe poor countries.

3% fee, what a rip-off!
I see huge opportunities for shops to accept BTC in Kenya.

I have been hearing about Africa being one of the first countries to use bitcoins for remittance. The fees can range upto 40-50% of the transaction amount. SO bitcoin is obviously the best solution for them

3% is tiny compared to what they get charged by rip-off banks. I really hope more people become aware pf the huge savings there is for the remittance market as that would be huge for bitcoin.

There are a lot more poor people in the world than rich.
Nice exposure for Bitcoin and another sign that the media cycle is turning strongly positive.  :)

https://bitstake.info is doing this, they don't even need internet architecture, just telecommunications network.

It's already happening, snapcard can make SMS transactions workable right now:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=334274.0

Fees are more like 12-15% but BTC transactions should be done with the standard 0.0001 fee. Then the issue is to find an exchange in Africa which will only ask for a 1% fee.

Good to see that. :)

Crossing foreign exchange controls is why Bitcoin was born and what biggest advantage Bitcoin is.

glad to see bitcoin helping African migrants to send money home
this is the advantage using bitcoin
transfer in less than 30 minute, fee is very tiny, and can sent anywhere :)

Years from now, people will be looking back to see how bitcoin expanded and be shocked when they discover a large percentage of its success stemmed from the middle of Africa outward. Take about an evolution!

...

This is indeed great news.  Migrants can send money for cheap back to their families living in very poor countries.  Pay BTC "here", locals "there" get local currency.

I have to look into this for Peru.  Getting that license (or whatever) to transmit money looks like the b!+chiest part though. 

I hope that this idea takes off big-time.  One of the very best reasons for Bitcoin to exist.

3% is not too bad, to be able to buy bitcoin with my bank account in my country cost me nearly %15 above market price! It is not great but I should be able to make this money back easily when I go to sell more.

These guys are smart! This is the kind of news I've been looking for, seeing bitcoin genuinely benefit developing nations, the world's poorest folks. That's the best part of capitalism...no one is automatically excluded for any reason.

Seriously, if there's a will there's a way. That's capitalism...Bitcoin is a beautiful example.

Yes I was one example, bitcoin has been very helpful to me in a couple of months now and I am very grateful to people who make this all :)

I also helped with all of this, because I am just an unemployed :)
This may also be able to reduce poverty

yes I really thank all parties involved in this case  ;)

Mobile money services are going to take over the Africa continent soon. Yes it is very successfull in Kenya, but it's growing fast. A lot of the kenyan people work just across the borders and they taking the technology to those countries.

M-pesa has been around on the mobile for years now... Bitpesa is just making the process of converting and payment a lot easier.

I have done some contract work in some of those countries, so I know a bit about M-pesa. {When smart phones take off there, the transition to Bitcoin or other crypto currencies will be a lot easier}

Still good news for Africa.  ;D

I know personally some people in Africa and what I hear from them is that in many areas of Africa have problems with electricity and internet access.
So, Bitcoin can be good solution for them but only when they improve infrastructure.
Until then, I'm afraid that most Africans will still have to use other payment services, like Western Union.

Which country? Could you walk me through the fees you are paying in detail?
Maybe we can find you a better way to buy Bitcoin.

how do bitpesa or the phillipino one work under the hood? like why is this any cheaper than WU?

i get that if one day someone could just send them btc and they could use the btc to buy food at pay rent in africa then mission accomplished. but the africans aint giving two fucks about btc so fiat conversion is still necessary. and given that parameter, what makes these remittance programs worth anything? why is it cheaper than operations already in place? is it because it can be sent directly to their phone and you don't need a brick and mortar location?

While a lot of people would say 3 percent is outrageous, if you look at overall picture, it is still far cheaper than any of the money remittance services. Before bitcoin these people have no choice but to use whatever available sending options they at have at that time, and judging by what they earn it's a pity that a large portion ends up in another person pocket.

Which parts of Africa? Africa is a huge continent and that's like comparing Romania to the UK. It's true there are large parts of countries in  Africa that are without electricity and internet but the people that use the remittance market have to go where there are places with those to collect their money and if they can do that then they can use bitcoin too and save money in the process.

yes.  great to see the BTC being used for what it is designed.  free the people from the abusive fees from the monopolies.

well that's a good type of adoption, bitcoin should spread more like that, helping the poor with it it's a good way to use it

It's clear Africa is the best continent that can help simulate the price of Bitcoin as there are more business opportunities that can be created with Bitcoin and the Blockchain technology also help the millions unbanked to have access to financial freedom. Thats the reason why DBF wants to empower and mentor the young aspiring entrepreneurs in Africa to enter into crypto world to help them sell their products and services to the international market in exchange for BTC. You can check the article written by our founder Philip Agyei Asare on how Bitcoin is entering into African market via SMS. http://cointelegraph.com/news/112281/bitcoin-making-inroads-in-africa-via-sms

Great news, it's not only africa that has poor infractrustuctures, in places like india or even china... lots of places where bitcoin could inflitrate and spread like a nice virus.

I can offer a bit of data about rebit.ph here...

Sending about $50 via western union looks like about 5% to western union and 5% to the bricks and mortar cashout location.

Sending via bitcoin to rebit.ph removes that first 5% at the moment. The recipient still loses the 5% cashout location's fee (but if they have a bank account this fee is zero too).

Well, this is demographic Bitcoin was ideally designed to service so hopefully it works out. I am not just talking about a positive reflection on the price either, I mean I hope it works out for their standard of living.

The fee's are much less than those of Western Union, which has ripped people off since its existence. BTC is its biggest threat.

Here's the service:

https://www.bitpesa.co/

I've read articles that this company has raised substantial capital, and I'm pretty surprised because it's obvious it has no future. It might only enjoy some success now because no shops accept BTC in Africa, but once BTC will be widespread, nobody would need it any longer.

There are a lot of businesses, that don't make any sense, once BTC is widespread. Doesn't mean, they don't make a lot of sense now.
Just look at purse.io. They don't make any sense, when Amazon starts accepting BTC.
Does that mean, they should stop their business now?

Your sense for business is horrifying.