Can the digital cash to save the world's poor?

Can the digital cash to save the world's poor?

The bitcoin will help those who do not have access to bank. According to the World Bank, about 2.5 billion people worldwide do not have a bank account, making it difficult for them to savings and borrowing. Nothing to worry about. "Combining ubiquitous portable devices that provide internet access to digital cash offers a tremendous opportunity to radically expand access to financial services globally," had filed the Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle Internet Financial, which specializes in transferring money digitally. The Jerry Brito of the Mercatus Center, a partisan think tank, said that bitcoin could improve their services through mobile transactions already in use in the developing world. The Bitcoin can exist where there is a mobile phone, said Patrick Murck of Bitcoin Foundation and "... we believe that Bitcoin has enormous potential to improve the ability of people around the world to create and store wealth." This Bitcoin dramatically reduces transaction costs for transferring money from one place to another, but that alone will not help. The digital cash transaction services that have spread throughout the developing world have the same advantage. Recently, those who study the particular market found unexpectedly faced with a conundrum: instead open an account through a mobile phone and use it for transactions, a surprisingly large number of people get their cash, ask someone with a digital account to transfer to someone else with the bill, which in turn transfers the amount of cash in the fourth face-the ultimate consignee. Researchers call call such transactions, over-the-counter (OTC) transactions. Half of the transactions made ​​via mobile in Bangladesh conducted OTC. Nearly two-thirds of transactions EasyPaisa, a service transactions through mobiles in Pakistan operates OTC. In Kenya, which serves as a global model the possibilities of mobile transactions, about two-thirds of all transactions conducted in this manner. In theory, digital money, like bitcoin, offers an ideal advantage over cash : reduces transaction costs savings and money transfer. A bank customer no longer needs to go to a bank or an ATM, which in some cases means within a day by bus. But transportation is not the only obstacle. As described by Greg Chen of the Advisory Group of the World Bank for assistance to the poor, many of them do not use bank may be illiterate, exhausted from their daily work and not master new technologies. Under these circumstances, the payment of an intermediary for processing digital payments may not sound unreasonable. Bitcoin This could further reduce transaction costs by making it cheaper mobile confirmation TRANSACTIONS. This is good. But he can not do anything about the cost of transactions described by Chen: illiteracy, depletion and suspicion toward new technology. The bitcoin can not learn in the world to read. And this does not even touches the issue of social barriers to using mobile that researchers identify. 's quite convenient to believe that poor technology is the only obstacle to helping everyone. Alienation of technology is not a problem in San Francisco or, to be fair, in most of the developed world. But a problem for the 2.5 million people who do not use the banking system. There are still huge obstacles before they can even reach the point where the bitcoin could help them.