Blog / Articles / How Bitcoin is different from cashless services such as Apple Pay and Android Pay?

How Bitcoin is different from cashless services such as Apple Pay and Android Pay?

How Bitcoin is different from cashless services such as Apple Pay and Android Pay?

As time passes, we seem to be getting closer to the hypothesis of a society without physical money. How is this so? Well, leaving aside the appearance of innovative platforms which will likely make cash obsolete in the near future, research has also shown that there is only a total of 8% of physical cash represented in our world, which means that the trillions of dollars that people from all around the world use are rather digital number, or simply digits, as we like to call them.

While you can most probably pay for almost everything with the help of cash at this moment in time, you can also go days at a time, without using it, thus showing how the system is slowly changing. As cashless transactions are growing, banks and other financial institutions wish to encourage this trend, as it’ll allow them to save money, while also giving people a more efficient way of making transactions. To help make the principle of a cashless world a reality, there are services such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Android Pay and more, which are gradually popping up on websites all around the world.

However, while these platforms seem to make transactions much easier, there’s more than meets the eye. Each of these emerging new services have been proven to identify and track users, only to later harvest this data to provide us with ‘informative’ ads. Tracking cash is of course possible as well, but the process is much more complex and calls for tons of additional man-hours from companies which harvest transaction data for a profit.

Bitcoin represents the main way to avoid transaction tracking, while also allowing you to make quick and efficient transactions, without the use of a credit card, cash, but rather through a simple app, thus offering people from all around the world the best of both worlds. As the Bitcoin system is self-regulated and decentralized, there’s no central authority above it, hence allowing people to carry out transactions as they wish, without worrying that their privacy will be compromised. However, as the blockchain is a public ledger, where all transactions are displayed, it’s still possible for users to be tracked, but this is equally difficult as tracking with the help of cash.

Perhaps this is the main reason why banks from all around the world have decided to turn their backs to bitcoin, and come up with ridiculous reasons, such as the increase in bitcoin criminality, when in fact, illegal transactions only account for around 2% of actual bitcoin transactions. It’s also worth pointing out the fact that as bitcoin cannot be controlled by a central entity, banks will not be able to earn as much profit as they do when using fiat.

Based on everything that has been outlined so far, what do you prefer? A cashless financial market, where you can pay for your products with a debit/credit card or an app, but have your transactions tracked, or the same cashless financial market, where your privacy is much safer, and where transactions can be made just as efficiently? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.  

⏴ Back to Blog

Loading...