A Threat to Bitcoin? Facebook Rolls Out P2P Payments on Messenger

[cakir]

It's not a threat.

It's not instant enough to be threat. They're just middle man between money transfers between banks. It's quite useless.

[Denker]

I don't see this as a threat... Why would it be? P2P or not, we know that bitcoin is the real decentralised technology...  

Take a look at this, UK gov is trying to make their country a global center for digital currency trade and fintech in general. They know how big of a potential bitcoin and the blockchain has when it comes to financial technology development.

Could facebook's User to User payment processor achieve any of this? Probably not.

Relevant:

<- click

Nice graphic. It just has a small misspelling. It is Rakuten and not Ratuken.

[Lauda]

At the first glance, I was expecting you to be the one promoting this feature (from the title). Anyhow this is dumb in my opinion. This literally has almost no benefits. You still have to wait for the long transaction times from the banks.
I have plans to delete Facebook permanently soon, as it is really useless these days. Their applications are even heavy on the phones.

[stevenh512]

I don't see what problem Facebook thinks it's solving here. To me it looks like Facebook just sees companies like PayPal, Apple and to a lesser extent Google making a lot of money by piggybacking on top of the existing credit card, ACH and/or SWIFT systems and they want in. It's still a centralized solution, relying on technology we've all had indirect access to (through our banks and our credit/debit cards) for decades. When PayPal came along, they at least made the leap from having to go to the bank or a Western Union to wire money, to being able to just email money to someone. I don't see any similar leap with any of the solutions that have come along since PayPal with the possible exception of NFC payments with Google Wallet and Apple Pay.

A threat to Bitcoin? No, just someone else trying to capitalize on PayPal's business model.

[redhawk979]

They have something like 1.5 billion active users per month

Those people don't care that its centralized.

[thew3apon]

It's not P2P at all, centralized, no privacy
It just another regular service

But, i bet soon it will be gone

Agree its centralized completely different to bitcoin.

[OpenOcean]

Just an unoriginal and lazy hack attempt at trying to steal Bitcoin's limelight.

[Agestorzrxx]

They still using fiat to transfer money, so it's not a threat to bitcoin. They can't transfer money in
international.

[Undermood]

Not threat at all. Facebook just follows the step of Apple and paypal! Let see how it will go! Facebook has a very big of user base and could attract many customers.

[remotemass]

Will facebook payments allow for micropayments? What will be the minimum amount to send?

[pedrog]

We already have bitcoin p2p payments in Facebook, through Changetip.

Of course, bitcoin option added to fund Facebook account would be great.

[alani123]

We already have bitcoin p2p payments in Facebook, through Changetip.

Of course, bitcoin option added to fund Facebook account would be great.

Changetip practically acts as a middleman so probably not P2P. At least not at the moment since ChangeTip CEO Wants to Bring Tipping Back to Blockchai.

[anonEmouse]

The graphic says it all.

Funny how everyone and their dog wants to make a p2p payment system but they skip over the reasons that makes Btc so strong.

#FAIL

[DarkHyudrA]

Its an already dead system.
Srysly, it takes at least 1 day to complete a transaction?
How much would we need to take this money on a bank account? 10 days?

[commandrix]

Unlikely, if it works only on Facebook-owned properties. At most it would be used for "tips" between regular Facebook junkies and who would think of using Facebook when you have ChangeTip.

[alani123]

Unlikely, if it works only on Facebook-owned properties. At most it would be used for "tips" between regular Facebook junkies and who would think of using Facebook when you have ChangeTip.

Well, while that's true it wouldn't be surprising to see this service receiving millions of users throughout the states. It's most likely going to be people that don't know any better.