Fed up with fees? Crypto use is growing for cross-border payments - survey:
A new survey released today by non-profit Stellar Development Foundation and UK-based cryptocurrency payments platform Wirex has revealed a heightened awareness, and increasing use and acceptance, of cryptocurrencies for cross-border payments in four key developed and emerging countries -- United States, United Kingdom, Mexico and Singapore -- indicating that crypto is being used for sending money to, and from, emerging markets in the form of remittances, or money sent by people working overseas to their families back home.
The survey, which gauged nearly 10,000 consumers across Mexico, Singapore, UK and US, suggests that the force behind the shift toward crypto as a form of payment is a frustration with the current financial system for transacting money between developed and emerging countries. More than half of the people surveyed -- 53% -- said they felt they paid too much in fees for international remittances via traditional financial means, such as wiring fiat currencies, while 37% said they didn't know what they paid in fees.
Given these pain points, the Stellar/Wirex survey indicates that cryptocurrencies used in international remittances, especially by people in emerging markets, is growing to the point where 52% surveyed said they see crypto "as a valid alternative to sending money overseas using traditional means," while 45% surveyed said they've already used it for remittances. What's more, the survey revealed that more than 80% of consumers -- in all four countries surveyed -- said they're aware of cryptocurrency.
"For me, the most important finding is that crypto is reaching the mainstream audience, not only in terms of awareness but also with what you can do with this technology to make the movement of money and value faster, cheaper and more efficient," says Denelle Dixon, CEO and executive director for Stellar Development Foundation, in an interview with ZDNet.
So what do you think? Have you transferred money across borders and if so, have the fees been too high to you? Have you considered using some form of cryptocurrency as an alternative means of transferring money?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @07:18AM (4 children)
I have done it a couple of times, comparing each time the rates with Wise (ex-Transferwise). I saved between 30~60 USD on mid 4-digit USD-equivalent transfers
There are some non-negligible limitations:
- most reputable exchanges require proof of residence, so unless you're willing to lie (soft lie like presenting a bank statement from an account that is still associated to a foreign address —e.g. parents' home— , or hard lie like falsifying statements they may not allow you to transfer significant amounts.
- there is a delay between the time you check the rates to decide between Wise or *coin and when you fiat wire reaches the local exchange.
- sometimes the only available reputable exchange applies fixed fees in *coin, which with the rise of BTC makes it prohibitively expensive.
- you have to prepare for yourself a spreadsheet for fully comparing a single rarely updated Wise or bank fee on the one hand, with local + remote *coin exchange rates and exchange fees.
Add to that the upcoming crackdown (EU and most likely others) on unregulated international *coin transfers... IMO in most cases it's not worth the trouble compared to official solutions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @07:30AM
So, it's like Uber?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @06:04PM
getting the coin in the first place might be a different story, but there's no reason to use an intermediary to transfer value/coin. just send monero/xmr for super cheap and fast with total privacy. there's even atomic swap from btc to monero now(not the other way around yet, but they are working on it). if everyone would just start accepting monero we wouldn't even need the bankster/government-loving whore exchanges for getting the coin to begin with.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday April 05 2022, @09:31PM
I use Wise almost exclusively because it's a lot cheaper and faster than others. Crypto would be too complicated for the receivers and the combined costs for traditional money transfers can be as much as 10%, including transfer rates. Just recently Wise blocked a transfer and required proof of income before proceeding, they're probably being forced by the powers that be.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 05 2022, @09:43PM
$60 in fee savings on a $3000 transaction is a whopping 2%.
If I did 10+ transfers like that a year I might consider it at 1 to 2% savings. However, when you factor in the risks, 2% isn't that much of an incentive.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Unixnut on Tuesday April 05 2022, @07:47AM (10 children)
I often send money overseas (mostly between UK/EU and non EU countries) between my own accounts . To use an example of sending 10,000 euros, costs using SWIFT:
- Sender pays 0.5% of total fee to send via swift (50 euros)
- Receiver has to pay 15 euros processing fee + 0.5% of total (65 euros)
- If there is any currency conversion, the banks use their own rates, which are pretty much never good for you.
Transfer time can take up to 5 working days in my experience. If you transfer more than 10,000 euros in one go, it gets flagged to the authorities, and they may freeze the transaction until you have a discussion with their anti-fraud/compliance team where you have to explain the origin of the funds, to who you are transferring the money to, what for purpose, and provide evidence to back this up.
I had that happen to me a couple of times, and once they actually froze my entire bank account, until I went to the bank personally for an "interview" to explain myself and my transaction. This is despite the fact that I am down as the owner of all these accounts, so I am not even transferring money to third parties.
Compared to sending via BTC (I sent some yesterday):
- Sender paid 6 sats per Bitcoin (0,002549 euro per Bitcoin) sent
- Receiver paid nothing
- Transaction took less than 6 hours, initial payment confirmation was under half an hour.
Nobody had to explain anything to anyone about why money was being sent, for what purpose, etc..., and I have sent more than 10,000 euros in one go in BTC without an issue all over the world.
For me it is a no-brainer, crypto is much better for me for international transfers. Even after having to exchange to/from BTC to fiat the overall cost was less than equivalent SWIFT transfer. The only risk is you having the bad luck of BTC's price doing an extreme swing, but rarely do you have such huge swings in a single day (it is relatively stable nowadays on a day-to-day basis) that it materially hurts you.
The above ignores that I actually pay a monthly fee for each of my EU and non EU accounts just for the privilege of having them open, while having crypto in my wallet has no monthly fee, and I can even keep stablecoins or gold backed crypto (e.g. PAXG) if I don't want to worry about excessive volatility.
Truth be told, I only keep the bank accounts at all because my company won't pay me in crypto, and a majority of merchants don't accept crypto, requiring me to have debit cards for cash withdrawals and payments (and they even charge a monthly fee per debit card, plus charge me each time I use the debit cards).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @08:56AM
So as you point out you're not paying in crypto "a majority of merchants", so your use case is not that of a "cross-border payment" as per title, which I understood as from one national currency to another.
If you only include the digital BTC transfer fees and not the fiat to BTC and vice versa at the other end, the comparison is unfair.
You also say that if you include these fees, it's better than SWIFT, but have you compared with more modern solutions? Wise, CurrencyFair, OFX, XE, and others that I don't know... It may be that for your specific currency pairs the BTC way is cheaper, but it's not true for all fiat currencies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @11:35AM
Well, I use Wise for transferring and I pay a grand total of 0.4% without any additional FX fixups and whatnots.
And at same time, BTC swings more than that in a single day. Why would I care about exchanging fiat to BTC to "transfer" it to some other fiat when I can just do direct exchange for cheaper?
I'm happy for out you like to hold BTC. I do not want to hold it ever. So, your solution is just not applicable as it's only the cost of transferring BTC to different wallet and has nothing to do with actual currencies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday April 05 2022, @12:51PM (2 children)
I just paid for my daughter's tuition at the University of London. Nominally the fee to pay in USD was relatively tiny, but when I compared the exchange rate to spot I coughed. That transaction cost way more than 3%.
The FACTA legislation BS makes it difficult enough for me to open a UK account that I'm just going to let it go. :/
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @01:56PM
With Wise.com, you can open "account" to receive local payments from UK in pounds and then transfer that to USD, etc. for not so much of a fee.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 05 2022, @10:04PM
Check Wise (formerly Transfer wise), they beat my bank exchange rate by nearly 3%
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 05 2022, @05:11PM (2 children)
Can we just get a single global crypto currency already? One adopted by all nations. No conversions necessary. Convenient government monitoring of all transactions makes tax time easier.
When can we get an Apple Pay or Google Pay sticker embedded in our right hand so we can easily tap to pay at point of sale terminals without needing a phone or smart watch?
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @05:30PM
You sir are a genius! May I have the honor of shaking your hand?
(Once this is implemented...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 06 2022, @07:23PM
People who pay national taxes in most countries, if not all, are delusional morons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @06:09PM
"and a majority of merchants don't accept crypto, requiring me to have debit cards for cash withdrawals and payments (and they even charge a monthly fee per debit card, plus charge me each time I use the debit cards)."
you might look at the bitpay mastercard or similar. the bitpay one doesn't cost you anything per month as long as you use it at least once per 90 days. you load it with btc and they convert it to fiat and then you use it like any other mc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @06:13PM
you might want to convert and transfer with XMR/monero, so they don't come knocking one day for multiple days of "interviews" and maybe claw back your btc as "tainted".
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @10:36AM (8 children)
So, lower (right now, not guarenteed) fees, versus the really strong possibility that all my tulip bulbs with be worth next to nothing, tomorrow? Hell, yeah, go for the lower fees! What could possibly go wrong, with a currency based on, "nothing"?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 05 2022, @11:30AM (7 children)
The obvious rebuttal to that is don't keep your tulip bulbs through tomorrow. It's interesting how yet another batch of poorly thought out regulation has created a huge need for a workaround again (unixnut talking about being unable to send more than 10k Euro via normal means in one go without a lot of hassle). Like gig economy ride hailing.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @11:41AM
I've sent €40k already thanks to the fuckups that Putin's war has become. I had to send a photo of my passport to verify it was me. So my anecdotal evidence is that his claims are bogus or there is some pattern of unixnut doing strange things that trigger anti-money laundering systems. Moving things in and out of crypto is not going to help him/her in this regard either.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 05 2022, @10:07PM (5 children)
I don't doubt Unixnut's stories, but overall his banking environment sucks compared to the options I have always had based in the US. Not that our banks are loveable teddy bears, but they are nowhere near as bad (to me) as Unixnut describes.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 05 2022, @10:59PM (4 children)
I won't say that Bitcoin shines as an alternative means of transferring money internationally. But if your primary go to is flying around with cash, then maybe it's not that bad.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 06 2022, @12:38AM (3 children)
Yeah, my primary "overseas" dealings have been with the UK and Germany and those have been reasonable/smooth. In the 1950s my grandfather had little trouble working in Iraq and bringing the money home to Florida, using bank transfers, not cash.
I believe that 9-11 resulted in a lot of new international banking paranoia, and maybe it has been a successful component of the "war on terrorism" but it has been even more successful at undermining the US dollar as the globally preferred currency.
I wonder whether BTC is really better for money transfer than the cryptocurrencies specifically developed for the purpose, like Ripple?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 06 2022, @12:47PM (1 child)
I have to say that Ripple sounds more like a scam than a genuine currency, given that most of it is owned by the sole company that can issue it. Imagine if Visa had owned most of the money that was traded with its credit cards and could issue/sell a lot more than they currently have. They might be sitting on several trillion dollars in cash by now with ability to create even more money.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 06 2022, @09:42PM
To AC's point, yes XRP is a "bankster coin" but we're comparing with SWIFT FFS. I wonder whether Visa is more or less functionally transparent than XRP (Ripple)?
To the point: they could print their own money... Well, yes, but when they do that it will be more or less instantly disclosed in a fashion that bots can monitor. When Visa pulls a fast one it might get disclosed in a deliberately obscure fashion in the quarterly report.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 06 2022, @07:27PM
Ripple is a bankster coin. Have some integrity!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @11:57AM (1 child)
Maybe anecdotal evidence but most people sending remittances are idiots. You would think they would be more smart with their money, but they are not. Let's talk about Philippines that receives quite a large chunk of their GDP as remittances. How do these arrive? As bank transfers? No! Western Union, cash-to-cash payments. One of the reasons for this cockup is most people in Philippines have no bank accounts. They don't have it not because it costs money (there are free mostly if you have equivalent of $50 there), it's because you need ID and that is a hustle. So it's literally easier to give up and insist on Western Union and then they to blame the sender that they are not "flexible".
And yes, I know of dozens that do this and only 1 ever insisted of sending direct to bank account. Even with direct bank account transactions and those high costs compared to services like Wise, it was much less expensive than using Western Union (unsurprisingly).
So, I would take it with a grain of salt that people use it for remittances because of "pain points". Crypto will just end up another avenue how they will get swindled out of their money especially due to poor liquidity when it comes to BTC to non-USD/EUR fiat.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday April 05 2022, @12:48PM
This Anon has it right. Western Union has revenue of $5 Billion a year, mostly from helping the unbanked move money. They'd be an excellent investment if they weren't drowning in debt.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 05 2022, @12:09PM (9 children)
For a tech enthusiast, I feel a bit embarrassed that I have never tried any cryptocurrencies. Have never tried Uber or Lyft either. But last time I used foreign currencies was over a decade ago, when crypto was too new to be established as a viable option. Popped into Canada for a few days, and just used my regular credit card. Yeah, those dirtbags hit me with a 3% foreign transaction/exchange fee. There are credit cards that don't do that, and if I was going to stay longer, I would've got one. Learned that my cell phone didn't work with any of their cellular networks, so it was only good as a combo pocket watch and pocket calculator. Anyway, haven't had that need for crypto.
Also got a quick schooling on what money is really worth. For those currencies that aren't used internationally, outside their nation, coins are just scrap metal. Not worth the cost of transporting them back, unless real close to the border. Bills, yes, exchanges will take those for exchange, but coins, no. I actually got more than a Canadian cent for each 1 cent coin. The Canadian 5 cent was worth about 2 cents in scrap metal, and it rapidly worsened for higher denominations.
I even was a small time coin collector, but that hobby has, as far as I've seen, lost almost all its popularity. Started when I was a kid. Envisioned those coins someday being worth a lot more, when I was old. But no. There's not much point to keeping on hand something like a buffalo nickel, to look at occasionally, when you can just look online at pictures of any coin ever made. Silver dimes sound different when bounced off a hard surface, but I daresay if you want to hear the difference, no need to keep a few on hand, just find a video of it. I expect there are many. If not, there surely are old movies with the sight and sound of silver coins. As for their supposed value as a collectible item, nope! Most silver dollars are worth only whatever the silver is worth, which is more than $1, but nowhere near what it was once supposedly worth as a collectible. It's all scrap metal. I ditched my coin collection for what little I could get. And, yeah, some of the albums were made of those kinds of greasily soft plastics that release unhealthy chemicals as it turns all hard and brittle from decades of storage, and even sticks to and contaminates the coins.
One more thing. Manitoba, like Oregon, is (or was) doing this full service crap at their gas stations. Never ask them to fill up your tank, unless you don't mind them purposely overflowing your tank and spilling gas down the side of your car. Always ask for some fixed amount that'll get you close to full.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 05 2022, @01:11PM
(1) Canada no longer uses pennies, though technically, they remain legal currency. Cash transactions get rounded to a multiple of five cents. Bank accounts and credit cards are still calculated to the nearest cent.
(2) I used to live in Manitoba and never had problems with anyone overfilling a gas tank.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Tuesday April 05 2022, @03:13PM
Uber and Lyft are just unregulated taxis, you aren't missing anything. Once upon a time, I tried to get into either Etherium or Bitcoin, just for the fun of it. My ISP at the time sucked so horifically awfully bad, that it wouldn't even work. Too much to download / handle to even function. I might could get by with it nowadays, but it's a lot less profitable, more regulated, and less fun.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 05 2022, @04:44PM (6 children)
Neither have I, but for a completely different reason: It has "scam" written all over it.
Does fiat currency have its flaws? Absolutely, especially if the government issuing it is running into trouble. Are those flaws outweighed by the problems with a completely unregulated and extremely volatile alleged-asset backed by "everyone will think it's valuable eventually, we the people who are trying to sell it to you for staggering amounts of money say so and really really mean it"? No. The world of crypto generally seems to be populated by 2 types of people: (1) those who know it's a scam and are trying to cash in while they can, and (2) the marks who are giving up hard-earned cash for something quite possibly worthless (the smarter marks will eventually figure out the game and switch into the first group). The old saw about what's going on when you can't figure out who the sucker is at the poker table very much applies here.
If you're worried about hyperinflation or something, the non-crypto solution is to put your assets into things other than a bank account, like real estate, an S&P 500 index fund, or a bunch of other investment options any decent financial advisor could point you to. Among other things, big multinational corporations are relatively insulated from any single country's problems, because if, say, the EU goes belly-up, their operations in the US and Asia will help keep them afloat, and vice versa.
And if you're going to come at me with "But fiat currency is just a social fiction, bro", I'll point out the concept of private ownership is also a social fiction. What's keeping your dollars/yen/pounds/euro/yuan/etc worth something is that there are laws requiring them to be worth something and people empowered to use force to stop someone from ignoring those laws. And what's keeping your car "yours" is laws saying it's not OK for somebody else to grab your keys and drive off in it, and people empowered to use force to stop someone who tries that. Social fictions are something we all generally agree to because they're useful for solving certain kinds of problems, and fiat currency exists and has stuck around because it solves a lot of problems related to barter and volatility in the value of frequently-used exchange commodities like gold and silver.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 05 2022, @08:03PM (5 children)
I could get into it if it just didn't waste so much damn energy!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 05 2022, @10:14PM (3 children)
Wasting the energy is essential to the "inherent value" the cryptobros are always on about, though. Even though the calculations that energy is being used to perform are utterly useless for anything other than generating crypto tokens saying you've done it. If the dollar went to hell, I'd rather have dollar bills than crypto currency, because at least I could write on them or burn them.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday April 05 2022, @11:11PM (2 children)
Unless, of course, your dollars were in a bank. Then you can't even do that.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 06 2022, @12:17PM (1 child)
But you can't do those things with crypto no matter where they're stored.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 06 2022, @02:02PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 06 2022, @07:30PM
but bankster-backed wars are good for the environment? how much funding would wars get if every individual held the money? We'd have peace on earth just based on laziness alone!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @01:21PM
Russia propaganda! Crypto weenies that will never get laid!
SpaceX^W Activision workers! Evil MRAs who believe that one's gender assignment at birth does not magically make sexual harassment and assault ok. Incels!