Comparison Site Seeks to Boost Bitcoin Remittances in Latin America

By Yessi Bello Perez

A new price comparison site hopes to boost bitcoin remittances in Latin America by placing traditional and digital currency-based services side by side.

Mondome, which has already partnered with exchanges such as Bitso, MexBT and Ripio, has been designed to let people understand bitcoin's benefits by letting them to compare it with other existing payment methods.

Pelle Braendgaard, co-founder at Mondome, said:

“Bitcoin is clearly a great technology for remittances. However, for most people there are no alternatives to the two or three remittance companies you see signs for every day on the street.”

“If bitcoin is going to change this”, he added, “we need to first of all show normal, non-technical people in immigrant populations around the world the benefits there are.”

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Bitcoin Predictions for 2015

By Carlos Maslaton
In our blog post 10 Reasons Why Bitcoin is the Future, Xapo’s Chief Strategy Officer Ted Rogers wrote that “it will take years for bitcoin to achieve its status as a global unit of account but, as it spreads across borders and becomes a de facto global currency, it will transition naturally into the standard unit for measuring value.”

That’s the long-term view of bitcoin’s future. But what about the short-term? What role will 2015 play in bitcoin’s trajectory toward becoming a “de facto global currency”? Here are some of my 2015 bitcoin predictions.

Tipping and remittances will continue to increase

One interesting thing to watch in 2015 will be the total number of bitcoin transactions on any given day. I expect this number to continue heading skyward, driven in part by microtransactions, tipping and remittances. Take a look at the chart below (from blockchain.info), which shows the total number of bitcoin transactions throughout 2014, and you’ll see what I mean.

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Filipinos Can Now Withdraw Money from 450 Bank ATMs, Thanks to Bitcoin Firm

By  Carlo Caraluzzo

The Philippines has more overseas workers than nearly any country in the world, and remittances reached an all-time high of $25.1 billion in 2013. But the cost of sending money home to family has historically been high. That is changing, thanks to the Philippines Bitcoin exchange and remittance service Coins.ph. The company has a new service that allows recipients to instantly withdraw money from a bank ATM.

The company is releasing a mobile app that allows their customers to deposit funds anywhere in the world through a Bitcoin ATM and send it to someone in the Philippines. They are also able to deposit from a Bitcoin balance being held in a Coins.ph online wallet.

Coin.ph has said that this might be the first service of its type, but this is not quite accurate. Wall of Coins, for instance, allows users to deposit funds that recipients can withdraw from hundreds of bank ATMs in the United States and Canada, and another company is planning to offer the same service in Mexico, set to be launched in February of 2015. There is also a local competitor, Rebit.ph, that is trying to open Bitcoin services to residents.

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Bitcoin Firm Enables Remittance Withdrawals at 450 Philippine Bank ATMs

By Jon Southurst (@southtopia)

Philippine bitcoin exchange and remittance service Coins.ph has added an 'instant' remittance' service to its list of options, allowing recipients to withdraw sent funds directly from a bank ATM.

Using the company's mobile app, customers anywhere in the world can deposit cash via a bitcoin ATM and have a friend or relative collect it instantly from a bank machine. Money can also be sent directly from bitcoin balances in Coins.ph web wallets.

To make this possible, Coins.ph has integrated with the eGiveCash service operated by the Philippines' Security Bank. Anyone receiving money via this service can withdraw cash from one of bank's network of 450 ATMs countrywide, without the need for an ATM card or a bank account.

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Why Bitcoin Remittance Services Should Leave the 'Bitcoin' Part Out

By Luis Buenaventura (@helloluis)

Luis Buenaventura is head of product at Satoshi Citadel Industries, the parent company of Rebit.ph, a Philippine bitcoin-based remittance service.

The sister cities of Hong Kong and Macau currently house more than 200,000 migrant Filipinos between them.

The breakdown is fairly homogenous in terms of occupation: the largest group consists of 160,000 Filipinas working on Foreign Domestic Helper visas on the Hong Kong side, with a little under 17,000 on the Macau side.

Together, the two groups transferred over $380m back to their families in the Philippines in 2013, amounting to between 30% and 40% of their collective wages.

The remittances industry has become something of an obsession of mine over this last year, as we have begun the long process of thoroughly educating ourselves on the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) situation around the world and rolled out our bitcoin remittance service.

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How HelloBit Plans to Become the Uber for Global Remittance

Remittance, the ability to send cross-border payments from one party to another, has emerged as a major use case for bitcoin, and a number of companies are already seeking to build global remittance platforms using the digital currency.

One of the main reasons is that, according to the World Bank, remittances cost consumers an average of 8% worldwide. Yet, despite bitcoin's potential to lower costs in this financial sector, there hasn’t been a blockbuster venture in this space yet.

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Bitcoin Exchange Igot Expands to Over 40 Countries

Australia-based igot has announced the next phase of its bid to be the "fastest-growing bitcoin exchange in the world", opening for business in over 40 countries including the European Union and parts of the Middle East and Africa.

CEO Rick Day told CoinDesk the exchange has "solid banking relationships" in the EU, saying there are now over 100 banking options for users to choose from.

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