There are some services that are just easier to use crypto currency to pay for because the maintainers don't want to deal with payment providers. The paid version of cheogram is a good example. This really was the original idea behind bitcoin: dynamically selecting payment providers every ten minutes so they become a commodity.
No one is using crypto out of choice for payments. The gigantic transaction fees alone would deter any sane person from using something like bitcoin, and other coins are even less reputable.
The only reasons to use crypto are either for speculation, or for trade where traditional networks can't be used - illegal activities, transfer to/from certain countries.
The problem is always wherever the other party supports your payment methods. You can literally pay by holding a smart watch over a supporting terminal. the same with online shops and Google wallet, Amazon pay or whatever
There are so many options at this point that I never get why anyone makes this about crypto currency. Most of these options are older and more widespread than Bitcoin as well.
This doesn’t explain why paying with Crypto is better though in this use case.
The UK example just shows that a decentralised blockchain approach isn’t required to meet the use case you are describing - in fact it’s worse for the described use case in almost every metric.
Having a different, worse alternative isn’t exactly something to shout about.
I paid for something with crypto just two days ago. I don't do many transactions with crypto, because most of the time it's easier to just use my cards, but on occasion it's handy.
Frankly, it works well, but it's not user-friendly for non-technical users still.
Because often payment processors arbitrarily agree with eachother decide not to do business with someone you want to do business with. With crypto, they can't stop you from paying for someone.
Payment processors are currently a form of zero representation government that decides what businesses are allowed to exist online, and they frequently abuse this power. They can only by avoided by using crypto. This is the one big use case of crypto i see as important, really...
Probably a lot of work, but isn't the main issue limiting yourselve to crypto payments?
Customers don't care about the tech involved. Ease of use is the main issue and people pay goods in $ a lot more, since they don't hold on to it as much.
Another reason to adopt alternative payment methods and currency that respect privacy. Like decentralised bitcoin or monero.
You don't need to like crypto, but all those privacy issues, inflation, regulations, etc. with fiat money naturally leading to find better alternatives.
I think it boils down to payment processing fees. For patreon for example it would be super inconvenient (and expensive) to process all payments individually, so payments are made in bulk. This is why monthly payments are the standard.
With crypto you can perform instant sub $1 payments with minimal fees (blocks aren't full so it's super low atm). It also saves not having to handle chargebacks, fraud, etc.
That also seems like an inefficient way to handle transactions. This is honestly surprisingly, I always assumed crypto had better payment solutions! After all, that’s what they all proclaim to be - not speculative gambling or scamming.
Why would anyone want to use a cryptocoin though a service like facebook?
Venmo / ZuckBucks / Paypal / Patron all are much simpler and more efficent for payments. Plus you don't have to buy the cryptocoins from someone who generated nearly for free and then and then jacked up the price, with Venmo etc it's instant and hassle free.
It never ceases to amaze me to see Bitcoin / Ethereum users try to come up with what-if services in an effort to trick others into thinking the database token is worth anything to other people.
No one is using crypto for payments yet because the infrastructure is still expensive and not a viable alternative.
There are plenty of use-cases where using crypto can be a better alternative for merchants (no risk of fraud and chargebacks) and consumers (micropayments where the cost of CC processing is higher than the cost of fraud, or purchases where the payee values privacy above all else - think "Ashley Madison" subscribers who'd rather not have their names on the site)
* Donations to wikileaks. Paypal froze their account and there are tons of examples where they have done this without good cause.
* Legal businesses like marijuana sellers, porn, escort services and gambling platforms have had trouble using and keeping payment services. Some have been forced to only accept cash payments as they couldn't accept credit cards.
* A way to accept irreversible payments digitally. Credit card charge back fraud is a big problem.
* Credit card companies and other payment processors take an often expensive fee. Cryptocurrencies are much cheaper (see Bitcoin Cash as Bitcoin is not a good example).
* Easier to move money. For example sending money to or taking money with you when you cross borders. Western Union is slow, expensive and cannot be used to send everywhere. The same can be said about banks in isolated countries or countries in disarray. With cryptocurrencies all you need is internet (sometimes a VPN as well).
Edit: As usual when I try to point this out I'm down voted. I encourage you to counter my examples.
The problem is payment processors deciding who you can and cannot give money to. Crypto currencies solve this problem by not requiring traditional payment processors to make an exchange of value between parties.
the global issue, in theory, is easily solved with a cryptocurrency like bitcoin. if bitcoin could ever get a better user experience (don't have to go through the pain of setting up a wallet, etc.), these type of services would be much less attractive.
And this is one of the major points of cryptocurrency as a replacement for the current payment systems. In the end we don't want Banks, Visa, Coinbase, etc.. because they F* with our money.
Allow me to make the case for cryptocurrency as a payment system.
There are still systems like Monero, Firo, and others which are heavily used as payment networks on the DN due to their ability to obfuscate the source/destination/amount of transactions.
Even then, many micro-transactions have little need for anonymity/security and might happily make a tradeoff for lower anonymity and/or higher centralization in exchange for lower fees. There are systems like Nano and GNU Taler which try to address this.
There's a lot of BS surrounding "web3", but the dream is really this: Imagine you could have a spam-prevention system that requires a small fee for users to access a scarce and easily DoS-able service or resource - all without the vendor lock-in, tracking, insecurity, fraud, proprietary software or fees associated with middlemen like PayPal.
I might pay to read a news article for 0.2 cents if I didn't have to give them my credit card. I might pay youtube a cent for every video I watch without ads, in fact I might even pay a cent for a third-party service to strip youtube of ads even if they didn't offer that service. Such a hyper-competitive system would discourage easily-bypassed advertisements and tracking in favor of an online economy that makes it easy to securely spend or donate a minuscule amount of money.
I think the largest reason why we don't see bitcoin taking this role as a payment processor goes back to the 2017 XT dispute wherein bitcoin users decided not to increase the block size limit and the users who wanted to decrease payment fees forked off into "bitcoin cash", which happened to coincide with the 2017 bull market. In this sense, bitcoin is a bad example of a cryptocurrency because of its disproportionately high fees and it's use of extra measures like LN. An example of a more "normal" cryptocurrency would be something like litecoin or bitcoin cash.
reply