7 ms·

That's a great insight, it's incredible as adults how much we take credit cards for granted. An increasing proportion of my non-essential spending (e.g. non-foo

That's a great insight, it's incredible as adults how much we take credit cards for granted. An increasing proportion of my non-essential spending (e.g. non-food expenses) now come from online shopping and it's an incredible business opportunity for companies to accept something other than credit cards online, either for teenagers or for adults who can't get a credit card for whatever reason.

kristofferR 12y ago
The FDIC estimates that 7.7% of the US adult population is unbanked, and 20% is underbanked [1]. Being un(der)banked is often very costly, it's one of the worst ways where being poor is very expensive [2]. On a global scale the issue is even worse, there are billions of people without access to proper banking services. I can't even begin to imagine how much time/energy/value/productivity is wasted globally due to that. Bitcoin, or another similar solution, may be the key to helping to bring those billions out of their economic exclusion and into a more prosperous reality [3][4]. [1] https://www.economicinclusion.gov/surveys/2013household/ https://www.economicinclusion.gov/surveys/2013household/ (2013 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAxL4TB6pmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAxL4TB6pmQ (Spent: Looking For Change (Documentary)) [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NfNwjJfrOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NfNwjJfrOg (What Bitcoin Means For Unbanked Economies) [4] https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/cell-phone-connected-unbanked-bitcoin-will-bank/ https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/cell-phone-connected-unbanke... (The Cell Phone Connected the Unbanked, Bitcoin Will Bank Them)
- pionar 12y ago
  Ok, I'm not sure how bitcoin will "solve" anything related to this issue. The issue is not the currency, the issue is the bank. Who will start the bank and accept the risky customers? Just because the currency changes does not change the causes of being underbanked.
  - celticninja 12y ago
    with bitcoin you are your own bank, you dont need a bank to give you an account. You create your own and people can send you money and you can send them money at very low cost. sure you dont get traditional services such as overdrafts, or bank charges but for the underbanked this is part of the problem not the solution. A user in the Phillipines can create a wallet for nothing. Their relative in the US can send them bitcoin, then they exchange it for cash in the phillipines. they dont need a bank just a local trader who will trade bitcoin for cash, this will become more widespread as adoption grows so finding someone to trade with will be easier.
    - hnnewguy 12y ago
      >with bitcoin you are your own bank A bank isn't a vault to store money, it's a service provider. They provide services for money, including the assumption of risk. Whether those services justify the fees charged is another story. But you certainly aren't "banking" with bitcoin any more than putting cash in your wallet is "banking".
      - DaFranker 12y ago
        celticninja replied to you here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734653
    - celticninja 12y ago
      I cant reply to hnnewguy so i will post it here. What services does a bank provide? it holds your money, it sends your money, it allows people to send you money. all of these can be achieved by bitcoin. Outside of these functions everything else is a finacial service; loans, overdrafts, mortgages etc. all of which attract fees and charges, these are products you are being sold, this is not banking. hnnewguy says that banks accept risk, well the risk they accept is not you, not if you are the one depositing money with them. you are taking the risk by letting them hold your money. they do assume risk but that is when you are taking out a loan or an overdraft, bitcoin does not replace these fucntions. bitcoin replaces, holding, sending and receving money, it does this far cheaper than a bank does, especially for the poor who are hit unfairly with charges that are very high in comparison to their income.
- _nedR 12y ago
  Ha. I am a 25-year old Indian founder of a startup in a semi-ramen phase. I have no credit-card - Its hard to get a credit card in India without a consistent income (and you need to show your previous year's tax receipts to prove it). No CC means no access to Amazon AWS or any of its international services. Indian debit cards are useless because the Reserve Bank of India has made it compulsory for all banks to use 3-D secure to authenticate debit card transactions online. So no Google Play, iTunes, Paypal, Steam, Alibaba or pretty much every other international website. The losses from this would easily be in the tens of millions and possibly in the hundreds of millions. We are lucky (Our company account has a credit card) but this is the biggest roadblock facing every young hacker/freeelancer/startup founder, especially those starting at the college level- You can't even open a Google play developer account. On the other side, there are millions of Indians who are blocked at the last mile while trying to purchase apps, ebooks, music on the Play store or iTunes (Microsoft Store seems to work but i cannot confirm this) with no explanation given other than a cryptic "Transaction rejected by bank" . If you are an app developer wondering why so few purchases come from India - this is the biggest reason why. It is quite baffling why the likes of Google or Apple can't get off their butts and implement 3d secure (which is becoming widespread everywhere but the U.S.). People are begging Google and Apple to take their money and being rudely turned away.
  - striking 12y ago
    From the Wikipedia article: "One disadvantage for merchants is that they have to purchase MPI to connect to the Visa or MasterCard Directory Server. This is expensive (setup fee, monthly fee and per-transaction fee)" and "Supporting 3-D Secure is complicated and, at times, creates transaction failures. Perhaps the biggest disadvantage for merchants is that many users view the additional authentication step as a nuisance or obstacle, which results in a substantial increase in transaction abandonment and lost revenue."
    - _nedR 12y ago
      We are talking about Google and Apple here. They should be able to afford it. They don't have to enforce 3-D secure on everybody.. they only have to deploy it on Debit cards from India. Also they don't have to implement it themselves. Many smaller merchants use 3rd party payment gateways. >>results in a substantial increase in transaction abandonment and lost revenue. Right now 100% of all debit card transactions in India are abandoned due to lack of 3-D Secure. Almost all Indians who have a bank account have a debit card. A very small minority have acccess to Credit cards. I think the biggest reason for merchants like Google and Apple to avoid 3-D secure is that they cannot pull money from your account without your permission. Each individual transaction has to be authenticated.

kristofferR 12y ago

The FDIC estimates that 7.7% of the US adult population is unbanked, and 20% is underbanked [1]. Being un(der)banked is often very costly, it's one of the worst ways where being poor is very expensive [2]. On a global scale the issue is even worse, there are billions of people without access to proper banking services. I can't even begin to imagine how much time/energy/value/productivity is wasted globally due to that. Bitcoin, or another similar solution, may be the key to helping to bring those billions out of their economic exclusion and into a more prosperous reality [3][4]. [1] https://www.economicinclusion.gov/surveys/2013household/ https://www.economicinclusion.gov/surveys/2013household/ (2013 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAxL4TB6pmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAxL4TB6pmQ (Spent: Looking For Change (Documentary)) [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NfNwjJfrOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NfNwjJfrOg (What Bitcoin Means For Unbanked Economies) [4] https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/cell-phone-connected-unbanked-bitcoin-will-bank/ https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/cell-phone-connected-unbanke... (The Cell Phone Connected the Unbanked, Bitcoin Will Bank Them)

pionar 12y ago
Ok, I'm not sure how bitcoin will "solve" anything related to this issue. The issue is not the currency, the issue is the bank. Who will start the bank and accept the risky customers? Just because the currency changes does not change the causes of being underbanked.
- celticninja 12y ago
  with bitcoin you are your own bank, you dont need a bank to give you an account. You create your own and people can send you money and you can send them money at very low cost. sure you dont get traditional services such as overdrafts, or bank charges but for the underbanked this is part of the problem not the solution. A user in the Phillipines can create a wallet for nothing. Their relative in the US can send them bitcoin, then they exchange it for cash in the phillipines. they dont need a bank just a local trader who will trade bitcoin for cash, this will become more widespread as adoption grows so finding someone to trade with will be easier.
  - hnnewguy 12y ago
    >with bitcoin you are your own bank A bank isn't a vault to store money, it's a service provider. They provide services for money, including the assumption of risk. Whether those services justify the fees charged is another story. But you certainly aren't "banking" with bitcoin any more than putting cash in your wallet is "banking".
    - DaFranker 12y ago
      celticninja replied to you here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734653
  - celticninja 12y ago
    I cant reply to hnnewguy so i will post it here. What services does a bank provide? it holds your money, it sends your money, it allows people to send you money. all of these can be achieved by bitcoin. Outside of these functions everything else is a finacial service; loans, overdrafts, mortgages etc. all of which attract fees and charges, these are products you are being sold, this is not banking. hnnewguy says that banks accept risk, well the risk they accept is not you, not if you are the one depositing money with them. you are taking the risk by letting them hold your money. they do assume risk but that is when you are taking out a loan or an overdraft, bitcoin does not replace these fucntions. bitcoin replaces, holding, sending and receving money, it does this far cheaper than a bank does, especially for the poor who are hit unfairly with charges that are very high in comparison to their income.
_nedR 12y ago
Ha. I am a 25-year old Indian founder of a startup in a semi-ramen phase. I have no credit-card - Its hard to get a credit card in India without a consistent income (and you need to show your previous year's tax receipts to prove it). No CC means no access to Amazon AWS or any of its international services. Indian debit cards are useless because the Reserve Bank of India has made it compulsory for all banks to use 3-D secure to authenticate debit card transactions online. So no Google Play, iTunes, Paypal, Steam, Alibaba or pretty much every other international website. The losses from this would easily be in the tens of millions and possibly in the hundreds of millions. We are lucky (Our company account has a credit card) but this is the biggest roadblock facing every young hacker/freeelancer/startup founder, especially those starting at the college level- You can't even open a Google play developer account. On the other side, there are millions of Indians who are blocked at the last mile while trying to purchase apps, ebooks, music on the Play store or iTunes (Microsoft Store seems to work but i cannot confirm this) with no explanation given other than a cryptic "Transaction rejected by bank" . If you are an app developer wondering why so few purchases come from India - this is the biggest reason why. It is quite baffling why the likes of Google or Apple can't get off their butts and implement 3d secure (which is becoming widespread everywhere but the U.S.). People are begging Google and Apple to take their money and being rudely turned away.
- striking 12y ago
  From the Wikipedia article: "One disadvantage for merchants is that they have to purchase MPI to connect to the Visa or MasterCard Directory Server. This is expensive (setup fee, monthly fee and per-transaction fee)" and "Supporting 3-D Secure is complicated and, at times, creates transaction failures. Perhaps the biggest disadvantage for merchants is that many users view the additional authentication step as a nuisance or obstacle, which results in a substantial increase in transaction abandonment and lost revenue."
  - _nedR 12y ago
    We are talking about Google and Apple here. They should be able to afford it. They don't have to enforce 3-D secure on everybody.. they only have to deploy it on Debit cards from India. Also they don't have to implement it themselves. Many smaller merchants use 3rd party payment gateways. >>results in a substantial increase in transaction abandonment and lost revenue. Right now 100% of all debit card transactions in India are abandoned due to lack of 3-D Secure. Almost all Indians who have a bank account have a debit card. A very small minority have acccess to Credit cards. I think the biggest reason for merchants like Google and Apple to avoid 3-D secure is that they cannot pull money from your account without your permission. Each individual transaction has to be authenticated.