Everyday Bitcoin: Replacing Bank Transfers & Credit Cards
I don’t have a bank account anymore, and I’m not missing it.
A couple of years ago I started migrating all my finances to cryptocurrencies. I wanted to see if I can give up my bank account and use only cryptocurrencies for all my personal and business needs. I’m actually surprised with how relatively simple this was.
This article is my attempt to answer the most commonly asked question I get from people when talking about using bitcoin as a currency. It’s certainly not the only answer. But it’s what I discovered when I asked myself:
“OK great. Got bitcoin. Now what do I do with it??”
You may find this annoying, but I’m not including links to the platforms and services I mention here. A small gesture to the reader, to clarify these aren’t being sponsored or promoted in any way.
Paying Rent & Other Invoices
What do you do with your bank account? Me, I use it for paying invoices, rent, insurance, and other relatives.
The one issue I have not yet been able to address is when the recipient requires a deposit from a bank account under MY name. Or, otherwise known as “doesn’t allow 3rd party deposits.” A good example of this is funding a bitcoin exchange platform. As of yet I don’t have a solution for it. For everything else, there’s —
Bitwala
My go to for bank transfers. The fees vary based on the country and fiat the currency funds are being sent to, but often more attractive than the alternatives when it comes to international transfers. Just like with a traditional bank transfer, Bitwala uses SWIFT transfers and generate a bitcoin invoice for me to pay to fund the transaction. It then takes a few days to get to the recipient (depending on the receiving account).
Hold-backs: the fees for some currencies are quite high and some non-crypto transfer providers (I’ve been using XendPay to supplement where Bitwala was falling behind) have better offers.
Bitwage
Bitwage is basically an HR/wage management platform. I’ve only just signed up with them so a full review of functionality still to come, but the proposition seems very interesting: allow clients to pay using their own currency (the platform says they’ll provide a bank account for deposits), then get my payment on the other end in bitcoin. Bitwage also hosts a gig economy marketplace for hiring freelancers.
Hold-backs: the fee structure and conversion rates they are using aren’t quite clear to me and I was unsuccessful in getting a clear answer from the support/founders over email. I hope to gain a bit more insight into this when I actually use the platform later this month.
January 5th, 2018 update: some of the information below may not be actionable due to the recent (and sudden!) change of policy by the European card issuer:
Online & In-Store Shopping
Probably the simplest problem to solve. Lucky for us, someone has already come up with the idea of prepaid debit cards. It’s therefore not surprising to find a variety of companies and services actually competing in the bitcoin funded prepaid card market. The topic of examining and comparing every possible company that offers bitcoin based payment cards could probably be its own series of articles (there’s an idea!) so, I’m just going to mention the ones I’ve looked into and been using.
CryptoPay
Offers virtual and plastic cards in USD, EUR and GBP. The cards work like any other debit card (powered by Visa) and there’s no difference in the experience in shops or online shopping. Virtual cards are especially awesome as I don’t even need to have them in my wallet, just the number (so they can’t be stolen or swiped).
Hold-backs: CryptoPay holds on to the private keys of their hosted bitcoin wallet, which is the only way to fund the cards. Additionally, funding the card with bitcoin and using it are two separate steps, which is in my opinion not optimal.
Gift off
In two simple words: gift cards. This one was great when I wasn’t ready to go all in and get a prepaid card. So far I’ve used it once to buy an Amazon gift card, top up my own account, and order some second hand books.
Bitrefill
A real treat was finding this cute, simple platform, offering prepaid phone top-ups billed in bitcoin. They seem to have a pretty broad offering of countries and phone providers.
There you have it, now you know how I eliminated banks and credit cards out of my life. This post is really just a brief and basic list of some of the tools I use to transact using bitcoin. There’s lots more out there — new lists, blogs and sites on the topic are popping up every day, as more and more people and businesses start adopting the technology.
I’m testing a couple more prepaid cards and plan to put a comparison report in the coming weeks. Currently looking into:
- Bitwala
- Xapo
- TenX
- Revolut
I also want to keep posting as I discover and try new platforms. Let me know in comments if there’s anything in particular you think worth focusing on. Thanks! ❤︎
p.s. I created a Twitter list of platforms and services I use to compliment this article —
