Bank of England: Digital Currencies Could Revolutionise Payments

By Yessi Bello Perez

A combination of digital currencies and mobile technology may reshape the payments landscape, according to a new Bank of England research report.

The One Bank Research Agenda investigates issues beyond the UK central bank's traditional scope to decipher how monetary policy interacts with developments such as climate change and increasing life spans.

Mark Carney, the Bank’s Governor, summarised today's launch of the Agenda saying:

"Economies are complex, dynamic and constantly evolving systems that are underpinned by social interactions and behavioral change, shaped by fundamental forces like technology and globalization and supported – or at times disrupted – by finance."

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Should Businesses Accept Bitcoin?

By Bill Conerly

Bitcoin has strong opportunities for mainstream businesses, but it’s hard to understand from listening to techies explain it. Here is what a company’s management needs to know about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a better way to do transactions. Forget about Bitcoin as an investment vehicle, or Bitcoin as a way to end the Federal Reserve. Its benefit to business comes from payments.

If your payments are occasional and in large amounts, don’t bother with Bitcoin. Let’s say that you’re Boeing. Once or twice a day someone sends you $100,000,000 for an airplane. Stick with your current practices.

However, say you run a coffee shop with an average ticket of six dollars, and nobody carries cash. You can collect an electronic payment with zero cost per transaction.

Say you’re a dentist who takes plastic. Occasionally someone disputes payment with his credit card issuer because his tooth is still hurting. Not only do you lose money, but you lose valuable time dealing with the dispute.

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New Hampshire Lawmakers Debate Accepting Bitcoin for Tax Payments

By Stan Higgins

The New Hampshire state legislature held a pair of hearings earlier this month that focused on how the state could create a means for residents to pay taxes and fees using bitcoin.

Up for debate is a bill recently filed by state representative Eric Schleien that would open the door for the state to accept bitcoin. The bill is currently being weighed by the New Hampshire General Court Ways and Means Committee.

If passed, the bill would allow New Hampshire to partner with a bitcoin company to accept bitcoin payments and receive US dollars. Similar efforts are underway in states like Utah to explore or take the first steps toward some kind of digital currency acceptance.

The committee met on the 12th and 17th of February to hear testimony from a number of local bitcoin activists and politicians. Speakers included Schleien, former gubernatorial candidate Andrew Hemingway, Ziftr CEO Bob Wilkins, as well as other state residents speaking both in support of and against the bitcoin payments bill.

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PLANES, TRAINS AND BITCOIN: UATP PARTNERSHIP MEANS AMTRAK AND 260 AIRLINES CAN NOW ACCEPT BITCOIN

By Gerrard Hartley

Through a critical partnership between UATP and Bitnet, 260 airlines along with Amtrak railways can incorporate bitcoin payments on their platforms.

In a press release, UATP president and CEO Ralph Kaiser expressed excitement for the ground-breaking travel partnership, showing immense support for Bitnet.

“We are very happy to be partnering with Bitnet to add bitcoin to our payment platform. We are always looking for skilled partners to bring additional forms of payment to the UATP processing platform and Bitnet fits the bill well.”

UATP, also known as Universal Air Travel Plan, decided that bitcoin integration was an important venture, so they teamed up with Bitnet and announced the implications today. UATP is a payment processor that’s privately-owned by airlines themselves.

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UK Exchange Launches with Backing From Regulated E-Money Firm

By Joon Ian Wong

The team behind a regulated e-money issuer has launched a bitcoin exchange called Digital Securities Exchange (DSX).

The issuer, ePayments Systems Ltd, has been an authorised electronic money institution with the UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, since last July. ePayments Systems has in turn made DSX its agent.

The move is meant to position DSX to capture the market for sterling-bitcoin trading, said Mike Rymanov, who founded and leads both ventures.

Rymanov said:

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McDonald’s Might Start Accepting Bitcoin Soon

By Armaan Chandnani

There are many rumors being spread regarding McDonald’s possibly accepting bitcoin soon. The reason speculation is so high is due to their announcement of accepting a new digital currency soon. They entertained a variety of questions through twitter, and the response was particularly interesting when asked if it was bitcoin. The tweet towards McDonald’s was as follows:

“So @McDonalds is going to start accepting a random type currency soon.. I wonder it its $btc #bitcoin”

The response given was:

“We don’t want to ruin the surprise! Hang in there, we promise it’s worth the wait!”

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Cubits App Launch Aims to Accelerate Bitcoin Buying in Europe

By Nermin Hajdarbegovic 

Cubits has launched a web app designed to speed up and simplify bitcoin transactions.

Notably, the London-based cryptocurrency startup allows customers to buy bitcoin in minutes, making it one of the fastest digital currency platforms in Europe, according to the company.

"We want to speed up the process of getting bitcoin and making online payments fair and accessible, especially for merchants and charities that could really benefit from lower fees," said Andreas Lehrbaum, co-founder of Cubits and the co-founding chairman of Bitcoin Austria.

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The Real Advantage of Paying with Bitcoin

By TREVOR MURPHY

Bitcoin is still very much in its infancy. When most people think of Bitcoin today, they remember the salacious news stories of hackers making off with millions of dollars, or the hugely volatile currency that seems to have been created from nowhere. It’s not necessarily thought of as secure and so it’s quite understandable that many are skeptical and even critical of its future potential. However, what most miss in the discussion is just what Bitcoin really is at its core, which is the first true money humankind has ever invented — and one that is programmable, so it can be built into everything.

Why do I say this? Well, from the very beginning of time, humans have traded goods with one another, and have used money as proxies for these goods, as a simpler form of exchange. That money has taken the form of gold and silver, sea shells, promissory notes and state-issued legal currency, to name but a few. In all these cases the money has been forged, cheated, stolen and its value decimated by inflationary tactics. Kings did it to pay off war debt, people clipped bits of gold coins, weighing scales were tampered with, the Federal Reserve was invented to control it, etc. There is not a single instance — until Bitcoin — of a truly trustworthy form of money, one whose value was constrained not by the laws and weaknesses of man, but by the universal laws of mathematics.

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What Bitcoin Can Learn From Mobile Money's Journey

By Sarah Boone Martin (@sboonemartin)

Sarah Boone Martin is founder of Rock the Coin, an organisation that engages in grassroots community outreach about bitcoin. She is also CEO of Boone Martin, a global communications firm that focuses on social impact investing.

Many of the greatest challenges faced by bitcoin today – adoption,

scale and regulation – mirror those of its predecessor: mobile money.

When launched in 2007, mobile money was just as foreign and raised as much alarm as bitcoin. Though it has since spread to 60 million active users, mobile money was not an overnight success. However, we now have seven years of data about its achievements and failures that we can learn from and use to shape the choices made by those in the bitcoin sphere.

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Aspen Institute CEO: Bitcoin Micropayments Will Change Banking

By Daniel Palmer

Walter Isaacson, author and CEO of the Aspen Institute, has said the advantages offered by disruptive technologies such as bitcoin will help shape the payments space in 2015.

Speaking to CNBC's Squawk Alley yesterday, Isaacson emphasised that, while payments innovations like Apple Pay are a step forward for consumers, it's important to find new technologies that will disrupt the banking and credit card systems "so we can have easier payments systems".

Isaacson said:

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PAYMENTS COMPANY VOGOGO INTEGRATES WITH HK BITCOIN EXCHANGE ANX

By John Weru Maina

Payment processing company Vogogo announced Friday that they had entered into an agreement that would see them integrate with ANXPro, a bitcoin company based in China. 

ANXPro will integrate with Vogogo’s payment processing and risk management platform, a move that would enable each to offer customers seamless transactions between bitcoin and fiat money in the US, Canada and the European Union. 

The integrated platform is expected to go live before March 2015.

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COINZONE LAUNCHES TO HELP EUROPEAN BUSINESSES EASILY ACCEPT BITCOIN

Payment gateway, Coinzone has launched a fully localized Bitcoin payment solution for businesses in Europe. 

And its intention is simple: provide an easy-to-use platform for accepting Bitcoin payments online and at point-of-sale.

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