Why Focusing on Bitcoin’s Customer Experience Matters

By June 26, 2016Bitcoin Business

Martin Hagelstrom is a bitcoin enthusiast, project executive and consultant working on IT projects at IBM.

In this opinion piece, Hagelstrom looks at how bitcoin can grow to mass adoption in a market full of digital payments systems run by tech and finance giants. While the choices are varied, one thing the industry needs is focus, he says. There is a very public war being waged between Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon and several banks, with the weapons of choice being their respective mobile wallets. And for a good reason – whoever controls the payment user experience will own the customer.

The person who uses Apple Pay doesn’t really care if they are actually using a credit card from Bank A or Bank B. In fact, they could switch banks with no friction, as their payment experience would not change.

So, the underlying financial technology has become a commodity and the wallet provider not only keeps a piece of that transaction, but they can also start offering functionalities that were previously exclusive to the banks. Which way forward?

Bitcoin has two options here: to become yet another underlying payment routing system for these wallets to use, or to compete with them and seek to control the end-to-end experience.

Don’t get me wrong – both strategies would produce huge growth for bitcoin. Being able to fund your Apple or Google wallet with bitcoin would probably be a boon for mass user adoption.

And, in countries with significant unbanked populations, it could provide a good solution to let companies working in payments to do what they do best and focus on routing transactions.

Bitcoin could even offer several advantages compared with other banking or payment service providers. For example, smart contracts could be set up to make that money usable only in certain places, or to […]

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