Battle of the titans: credit cards or cryptocurrency. Who will win?
At the time when bitcoin was created, there was no such thing as electronic money, so, in the beginning, the cryptocurrency did not have huge popularity. But despite the skepticism, today the position of virtual assets is rapidly gaining ground around the world and becoming a vital necessity. There are already large online companies that allow you to pay with cryptocurrency.
In the past, money was a symbol of gold, which was located in vaults. In today’s world, the value of a currency is determined by a number of factors, such as the rate of inflation and unemployment, the value of GDP, the current trend in the economy, and the level of interest rates. Also, the central bank’s monetary policy affects the price of a given currency.
In contrast to traditional money, bitcoin has no control or dependence on one system. And this is its main advantage. Because of this, blockchain is growing in popularity not only among big businesses and the stock exchange industry but also among ordinary people who now prefer to transfer their savings into cryptocurrencies. During the pandemic, there was a great opportunity to demonstrate bitcoin’s reliability. It reinforced the view that amidst an unstable economy, cryptocurrency solves many problems and gives a sense of stability.
In this way, replacing payment systems like Visa or MasterCard with bitcoin becomes only a matter of time, as the benefits that bitcoin offers consumers and merchants are undeniable.
In this article, we will look at how credit card and bitcoin payments work and find out the differences.
HOW DO CREDIT CARD PAYMENTS WORK?
Modern acquiring works as follows. The client puts the card to the terminal, which reads the data and sends a request to the bank to verify the client’s data and get permission, after which the terminal gives out a receipt for the transaction. It seems as if the money is already in the entrepreneur’s account, but it is far from that — the money is not there yet. The money is just beginning its journey. At the end of the business day, or any period agreed upon by the parties, the bank receives data on all the transactions, then the entrepreneur’s bank processes and sends this information to the issuing banks, and only after confirmation from these banks does the money finally reach the entrepreneur’s bank and immediately takes a percentage of this amount, and sends the rest to the entrepreneur’s bank account. It is only now that the seller receives the money.
From this scheme, we can see that the payment system is only a link that facilitates interaction between market players. This is a very important fact when comparing bitcoin to credit cards.
HOW DO BITCOIN PAYMENTS WORK?
To send bitcoins to someone, you need two things: a bitcoin address and a private key.
They are randomly generated and are a random sequence of letters and numbers. The private key is a sequence of letters and numbers, but unlike your bitcoin address, it is kept secret.
When Tom wants to send some digital coins to Jerry, he uses his private key to sign a “transfer request” which includes, as mentioned above, three types of data: the bitcoin address from which the bitcoins came to Tom, the amount, and the recipient’s address. Tom then uses his bitcoin wallet to send this “request” to the Bitcoin network. The miners there, find and then confirm the new transaction to the network by adding it to the transaction block, which eventually leads to an increase in Jerry’s bitcoin address balance.
The advantage of bitcoin over credit cards is that bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic money system because it has no intermediaries, agents, or third parties.
WHY BITCOIN MUST REPLACE CREDIT CARDS?
THE SPEED
It only takes a few minutes to create a customer account and a BTC wallet and the entire transaction process is completed in less than 10 minutes, while credit card payments take days to be confirmed.
SECURITY
Although artificial intelligence is constantly working to keep credit card transactions secure, identity theft is not becoming any less likely. The average amount of data breach damage for small businesses in Europe is $150,000. The risks associated with online payments are still consistently high.
In contrast, other than the amount and address of the recipient, Bitcoin requires no other information to process the payment. You only need to authorize the transaction with a private key stored securely in your wallet, and that’s it.
A hacker would need to compromise your device or use social engineering techniques such as phishing to steal your keys and initiate a Bitcoin payment. However, these problems can easily be avoided by paying attention to fake websites, storing your keys securely, or using a multi-sig wallet.
Business owners can also take advantage of Bitcoin’s secure network. The irreversible nature of Bitcoin payments prevents chargeback fraud when customers receive an item and then cancel the payment.
LOWER TRANSACTION FEES
In most cases, banks charge a fee for transferring funds. Its size depends on the method of sending money, the selected currency, the distance of the transfer, etc., and can be up to 3% of the amount of the original purchase.
Cryptocurrency in terms of commissions noticeably wins over the banking system. The transfer of funds in bitcoin and other digital assets is much cheaper than in banks because the amount of commission in most cases is not tied to the size of the transaction and depends on the payment system.
The average fee for processing a transaction in Lightning Network is one satoshi, which is equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC or $0.0004.
LESS PAPERWORK
Transfer of funds via bank method involves a lot of paperwork: you need to specify the beneficiary bank’s BIK, recipient’s full name, account number, the purpose of payment, and other data.
In this respect, it is much more convenient to use digital coins for funds transfer. To send bitcoin and the majority of other assets it is enough to specify the address where the cryptocurrency will be transferred, as well as the amount of coins. In some cases, you additionally need to enter a tag, but such examples are few.
ANONYMITY
Targeted advertising is based on information that you unwittingly pass on to interested parties every time you pay online with your credit card. After each purchase, you may be surprised to find ads for products that you recently purchased in your mail or on any page you open on the Internet. Information about your purchases is no secret to anyone.
When you pay with bitcoins, the recipient doesn’t keep your information, so you can shop in peace because they can’t sell your information to advertisers.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Every payment system has its pros and cons, and although bitcoin was initially criticized heavily, today you can’t deny its undeniable advantages, such as shorter waiting times for transactions, less fraud on chargebacks, and lower processing fees, and for consumers, it’s a quick and easy way to pay for goods and services. Hence, the very real prospect of replacing traditional payment systems with bitcoin in the foreseeable future, and therefore it is worth starting to accumulate it today. You can do it with cloud mining provider Hashmart.io