Bitcoin Magazine - Exchange Expands To Middle East and North Africa:
A new article on Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) by Vitalik Buterin describes the first support from any Bitcoin exchange for the CashU payments network. Excerpts:
CashU is a popular online and mobile payment method in North Africa and the Middle East, as the region’s large and young population currently has very limited access to credit cards. It works as a prepaid system, allowing users to top up their CashU accounts through CashU prepaid cards sold in the Middle East and Africa.
Bitcoin Nordic claims that by introducing CashU as a payment option [along with vouchers from partner UKash], they will have made Bitcoin accessible to over 300 million people who did not have a convenient way to buy it previously.”
“Bitcoin Nordic has potential to carve out a viable niche for itself for one simple reason: it has no competition.
Bitcoin [also serves] as a gateway to other stores through services like SpendBitcoins, which offers gift codes for stores like Amazon, the Apple store and Thinkgeek for bitcoins and even features a Buy Anything service that allows you to use Bitcoin as a proxy for any purchase online.
With this move by Bitcoin Nordic, the Middle East and North Africa will now be able to participate in Bitcoin’s worldwide growth in adoption, and millions of people will gain access to products and services that they had no way of getting to before, both inside the Bitcoin community and outside of it.
The point made about bitcoin being the link between payment methods is absolutely valid. There have been many technologies that operated as islands but only saw widespread use once they became interconnected. At one time, an AT&T wireless phone couldn’t send a text to Sprint phone, for instance. An AOL user couldn’t send e-mail to any user on any other online community. Once these providers interconnected freely (or at a trivially low cost) then growth exploded well beyond expectations.
Bitcoin is a versatile payment intermediary that connects well. Incoming payment flows are primarily cash-based like cash transfer methods Dwolla, bank transfers, and now this CashU payment option. This is due to Bitcoin transactions being non-reversible, just like with cash. So cash transfer methods have added the options for buying bitcoins but connections for moving funds out of Bitcoin are seeing even faster growth.
There are numerous method for cashing out bitcoins, including to a bank (ACH, SEPA and more), or to PayPal, Dwolla, Skrill (formerly Moneybookers), Moneypak, Payza (formerly AlertPay), cash in-the-mail, cashier check, postal money order, prepaid gift card, reloadable credit card and virtual credit card. That is just a fraction of the list of exchange cash-out methods and options for spending bitcoins.
There has never before been an electronic financial network that has interlinked all of these. Bitcoin Nordic’s CashU support is just one more interconnect, but its contribution to the network effect will not be minor.
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