PayPal, Western Union and MoneyGram continues to charge exorbitant fees from its customers to pay afloat
Image source: pixabay - mohamed hassan
Having the new blockchain technology will gradually cause older, traditional businesses to become obsolete. Today I am re-emphasizing on the remittance industry for international transfers. I have discussed about this topic two months ago when the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland endorsed the use of blockchain for future trades.
The most disappointing part about PayPal is how their leaders continue to put themselves under a veil while the world moves forward. Ex-Paypal CEO Bill Harris seem to think that its customers will continue to be scammed by resorting to pay a high price to make an international transfer. In the interview on CNBC, Bill Harris spoke against Bitcoin smearing "rat poison" over the cryptocurrency market and calling Bitcoin to have "no value".
"The cult of bitcoin [makes] many claims — that it's instant, free, scalable, efficient, secure, globally accepted and useful — it is none of those things." Harris said on CNBC's "Fast Money."
Source: CNBC - Chloe Aiello
Image source: pixabay - werner22brigitte
Little did the audience know, transferring money with today's remittance companies would have you losing more money than you would have expected. Did the money fall off the wagon while being transported? That seems to be the case as an example on finder.com showed that a remittance of $1000 from Singapore to US would have made you much poorer:
Transfer SGD1000 to US:
PayPal:
- $35 of Currency Conversion Fee (3.5%) + ~$50 (4.4% Transaction Fee + Fixed fee) = S$85 @ 1 SGD = 0.731 USD. US$668 received.
MoneyGram:
- S$78 Transfer Fee @ 1 SGD = 0.7367 USD. US$679 received.
Western Union:
- S$2 transfer fee @ 1 SGD = 0.6969 USD. US$695 received.
Bitcoin Exchange (just an estimate):
- S$10 Bitcoin Conversion Fee (1%) + US$0.10 Mining Fee @ 1000 SGD = 0.113 BTC, 1 BTC = 6400 USD. US$ 715 received.
Bill Harris has said all that he could to slander Bitcoin, calling it a "colossal pump-and-dump scheme", "zero value", "useless as a payment mechanism and ridiculous as a store of value" and "Bitcoin makes no revenue, no profitability". Shockingly, Harris stated concerns about Bitcoin's slow transaction time. PayPal transactions are performed usually within 24 hours while Bitcoin transactions takes an average of 78 minutes.
Also quite hidden from the customers view is the tanking of PayPal's market capital. While analysts continues to show that PayPal's businesses continues to grow in an upward trend, the remittance sector for PayPal definitely will not be performing well in the upcoming years. We no longer need remittance services from PayPal.
Image source: Google Finance
Asia's remittance service will be enhanced as the World Bank Group’s Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD) initiative highlighted that US$601 billion were sent from international migrants to their home countries in 2016. Source: enterpriseinnovation.net - Allen Tan.
The use of emerging technologies like blockchain is being marketed as a faster, more efficient method for sending money home – compared to traditional remittance methods. The entry of technology-led startups like Thailand’s True Money and Singapore’s Everex is expected to further reduce the cost of money transfers for Myanmar nationals working in Thailand.
Source: enterpriseinnovation.net
As much as Bill Harris may taunt the cryptocurrency market to see it fall, PayPal charging overly high fees as an overvalued company is not acceptable.