extinguishing Western union

[jonald_fyookball]

Bitcoin isn't a company.  I think it's time to put you on ignore. tired of your fud

[mercistheman]

A a community we're doing a poor job of getting this message out to the Western Union customer base.
It's easy to imagine that we'd have an significant conversion rate if they were made aware of the savings...
So how do we do this?

[MicroGuy]

Bitcoin isn't a company.  I think it's time to put you on ignore. tired of your fud

I've tried the burying my head in the sand approach, but never found it to be that productive.

Fud = facts you don't like

A a community we're doing a poor job of getting this message out to the Western Union customer base.
It's easy to imagine that we'd have an significant conversion rate if they were made aware of the savings...
So how do we do this?

The issue being ignored is how Bitcoin companies are now being forced to systematically block entire states (IP blocks) from using their services. New York, North Carolina, and the list is growing.

How many times was this new trend mentioned in the "Kool-Aid" lecture?

[Hollingsworth]

The point of this thread is rendered moot when you consider that Western Union is trial testing blockchain technology with various fintech companies including Ripple Labs. Remittance companies will have adopt some form of blockchain technology if they want to compete.

Interesting, I didnt know that.  Do you have a good article you can link please?

Here you go:

http://www.coindesk.com/western-union-pilot-program-ripple-labs/

Whether WU adopts the blockchain model remains to be seen.  Ripple Labs is now Fincen compliant. That would help bridge the gap for a traditional remittance company like Western Union looking for a legitimate player in the crypto world.

[Hollingsworth]

True story about Western Union:

Back in the late 1870s, Western Union essentially owned the communications network of the United States which was the telegraph. Along came Alexander Bell who offered his telephone patent rights to WU. The president of Western Union turned down the offer as he thought the telephone "Was just a toy."

To quote the wikipedia on Alexander Bell:
"Bell and his partners, Hubbard and Sanders, offered to sell the patent outright to Western Union for $100,000. The president of Western Union balked, countering that the telephone was nothing but a toy. Two years later, he told colleagues that if he could get the patent for $25 million he would consider it a bargain. By then, the Bell company no longer wanted to sell the patent.[87] Bell's investors would become millionaires, while he fared well from residuals and at one point had assets of nearly one million dollars."

This is considered one of the greatest blunders in the history of business.

[glub0x]

If they can't turn to bitcoin, they will turn to a laundry company or maybe a kebab
there is no question about the fact that bitcoin is either a threat or an opportunity to WU...

[kalooki]

All they need is a two-way Bitcoin ATM in both countries and Western union is dead! Foreign workers feed fiat on one end, send Bitcoin to the family's address. Wait for a few confirmations. The family relay the coins to another ATM at home and cash is home within 2 hours (time for confirmations).

Some problems with this idea;
1. Bitcoin ATMs currently charge a lot. Two ATM transactions will cost more than a single WU transaction for most (not all) transactions
2. In remittance markets, the ATM in the sending country would constantly need to be emptied of local currency and loaded with Bitcoin, and in the receiving country it would need to be constantly loaded with local currency and emptied of Bitcoin. If you were operating this service in the US and Philippines (say) you would end up with a lot of cash PHP sitting in the Philippines that you would need to repatriate to the US (not easy for a lot of money) and convert to USD to load up the US ATMs. There isn't a lot of people in the Philippines sending wads of money to the US to counterbalance it. Try running a business that needs to get a few million out of the Philippines or Brazil or Argentina every single month. I can tell you with absolutely certainty that this is not easy.

With WU, the sending of the transaction is not what people pay for; it is maintaining local cash liquidity and converting the transaction to local cash... that's the hard part and the expensive part.

It is only naive people who think that Bitcoin can replace WU entirely. Bitcoin can certainly replace part of WU, and provides a neat way to transfer value trustlessly. But it's the local cash handling bit that is the hard part that WU and Moneygram get right.

And before you say "all we need is local businesses to accept BTC so that the recipients don't HAVE to convert to PHP!" yes I get it, we all get it. Easier to say than to do.  

[Hazir]

Bitcoin ATMs and other services which 'enable' you to remittance your money are in my opinion a form of extortion to be honest.
There are services dedicated to do what bitcoin does by default but in addition they want your money for doing so.
Its time for people to realize that they don't need any company to transfer money, in fact remittance companies are obsolete.

[knowhow]

im pretty sure western will allow bitcoin to enter or they will create their own blockhain to send and reduce fees otherwise they will loose custumers.

[Jhacker]

1.5% is decent no?

Not decent at all, especially when you think how many users they have, and how many "1,5%"'s they take...

Aye, but there is no one out there using bitcoin to do anything like 1.5% at present.

I'm doing .5%, just in bitcoin only. If you have to pay 1% on either end to exchange into bitcoin, it's a little bit more, but if you get paid in bitcoins or buy them directly with localbitcoins.com, etc. it's cheaper.

Bitcoin only transfers cost a penny. How much business are you doing? Perhaps I am missing something, but isn't your service obsolete?

The site doesn't require downloading a software wallet, which is a major hurdle to user adoption. The only thing users have to know is the private key (and where they want to send it, of course). Boom, they can send the money. Even though to a technical person wallets are easy, to a non technical person it may make more sense to simply hold on to a key and use a one page, Google-like website to quickly send money. Helps educate people on how bitcoin works too.

[eerygarden]

1.5% is decent no?

Not decent at all, especially when you think how many users they have, and how many "1,5%"'s they take...

Aye, but there is no one out there using bitcoin to do anything like 1.5% at present.

I'm doing .5%, just in bitcoin only. If you have to pay 1% on either end to exchange into bitcoin, it's a little bit more, but if you get paid in bitcoins or buy them directly with localbitcoins.com, etc. it's cheaper.

Bitcoin only transfers cost a penny. How much business are you doing? Perhaps I am missing something, but isn't your service obsolete?

The site doesn't require downloading a software wallet, which is a major hurdle to user adoption. The only thing users have to know is the private key (and where they want to send it, of course). Boom, they can send the money. Even though to a technical person wallets are easy, to a non technical person it may make more sense to simply hold on to a key and use a one page, Google-like website to quickly send money. Helps educate people on how bitcoin works too.

Similar to the non-software wallet on blockchain.info?

[Elwar]

I use Bitcoin for remittance from US to Germany.

The guys in the office who have the same pay setup usually pay around 5% to get euros. But they do it through their bank. They have to pay an international wire transfer fee plus they exchange rate they give is always a few percentage off of the real exchange rate.

I get paid in bitcoins through BitWage and charge 10% to sell bitcoins via localbitcoins.

Ideally for those in the Philippines or anywhere else for that matter they would do something similar. The person in the US could choose to get a percentage of their paycheck direct deposited into bitcoins. Then their family back home could set up a business selling bitcoins, even for just 1-2% and they come out ahead while providing a good service to the locals who want to buy bitcoins at a good rate.

I always have a lot more people buying bitcoins with euros than I can spend in a month, so I just deposit the extra in the bank and buy more bitcoins.

Though people need to remember, there are over 500,000 Western Union locations in the world. They're not going down any time soon, if just for the convenience of it.

One guy here at work sends money to his ex-wife via Western Union. He's into bitcoins and has some and we tried to figure out how he could do the same thing using bitcoins. But his ex always wants that money the same day. She could probably do localbitcoins but I think he'd rather pay the extra money than deal with fighting with her over it.

[grahamdebarra]

When you consider that the likes of BitPesa charge up to 7% you realise the existing means for trading in bitcoin is insufficient at replacing Western Union (which has about 15% fees). An exchange needs to be halved again to around 3.5% maximum for it to claim to be cheaper than Western Union and banks.

So bitcoin has the potential to replace Western Union, there must be cheaper and easier ways for people to access and use bitcoin in certain regions including Africa.

[milaliss]

Bitcoin definitely has this potential. Replacing Western Union is just a question of time. There should be more bitcoin startups like this one
http://www.coinfox.info/news/company/2479-bitcoin-instead-of-western-union-philippino-company-enables-money-renittance-without-bank-account

[Jhacker]

1.5% is decent no?

Not decent at all, especially when you think how many users they have, and how many "1,5%"'s they take...

Aye, but there is no one out there using bitcoin to do anything like 1.5% at present.

I'm doing .5%, just in bitcoin only. If you have to pay 1% on either end to exchange into bitcoin, it's a little bit more, but if you get paid in bitcoins or buy them directly with localbitcoins.com, etc. it's cheaper.

Bitcoin only transfers cost a penny. How much business are you doing? Perhaps I am missing something, but isn't your service obsolete?

The site doesn't require downloading a software wallet, which is a major hurdle to user adoption. The only thing users have to know is the private key (and where they want to send it, of course). Boom, they can send the money. Even though to a technical person wallets are easy, to a non technical person it may make more sense to simply hold on to a key and use a one page, Google-like website to quickly send money. Helps educate people on how bitcoin works too.

Similar to the non-software wallet on blockchain.info?

No, not really; that's just an online wallet. So you still have to sign up with a username and password, and the site stores your private keys. This means that if you lose your password/mnemonic, you lose your bitcoin, and you are vulnerable if blockchain.info ever gets hacked.

Morsecoin.com is simply a bitcoin transaction front end. It does not require a user account or store any private/public key info. You can secure your private keys however you think best, and when you are ready to send money, you simply go to the website and paste the private key into the form. The balance is checked using the public key; the private key is never stored even in so much as a javascript variable. It only exists as the value of the form field. Transactions are built and signed client-side using javascript, and only the signed transaction is transmitted to the bitcoin network (uses the bitcore.js library). So it is completely secure, does not require any accounts or initial set up, and there is nothing to be hacked!

Furthermore, morsecoin.com provides a feature which ensures that you do not send bitcoin to the wrong address by mistake. If you send bitcoin using the "confirmed" method, an email will be sent to the recipient requiring them to verify that they own the address with their private key. Again, the private key is not stored and is simply used to verify ownership of the public address, after which the signed transaction is released to the bitcoin network.

[neurotypical]

It's obvious to anyone with grey matter and a long term vision: Western Union is the next Kodak. A company that charges ridiculously 30% fees just because they can get away with it DESERVES to be extinguished, and it will. Bitcoin will crush every single competitor in the business, it's unavoidable.

[NewLiberty]

It's obvious to anyone with grey matter and a long term vision: Western Union is the next Kodak. A company that charges ridiculously 30% fees just because they can get away with it DESERVES to be extinguished, and it will. Bitcoin will crush every single competitor in the business, it's unavoidable.

The incumbents have a great deal of protectionism from most of the governments.  It is not enough for Bitcoin to be better, it has to be massively better and this be apparent to everyone.

[Mr no juice]

I hope wunion burns to the ground they banned me for sportsbetting

[Kprawn]

Yea centralized organizations have the power to corrupt and the financial backing to monopolize a industry. It's not only WU though... It's the whole remittance industry that needs a kick in the butt. {MoneyGram etc. etc.}

Millions of people around the world are paying between 10% to 30% of their hard earned money to these remittance companies, to render a service that Bitcoin can do virtually FREE.

This industry is ripe for disruption, but they will go down with a fight... They already partnered with companies to make use of Blockchain technology to transfer money cheaper. They too, like the banks will just

develop a competing Blockchain technology, and then lower their prices to stay competitive... It's not the last Horaah we see from them.     

[BIT-Sharon]

How do you think Bitcoin could prevent crimes by remittance? How could you prove the origin of the funds?