Indians Lost $2.3 Billion In Remittance Payments In 2018, Is BTC The Perfect Solution?

In the latest crypto news we are going to India and visiting a local report which was published by The Times of India, in which it is stated that money transfers cost citizens and non-residents over $2.3 billion in fees last year alone into India, which is the world’s biggest market for inward remittance. This statistic has raised a lot of eyebrows but also scratched the surface of possibilities for digital currencies such as Bitcoin.

As the CEO of one local Bitcoin exchange WazirX  named Nischal Shetty recently stated, the dominant cryptocurrency could pave the way for near-zero remittance costs.

Dear @arunjaitley @narendramodi

Rs. 15,000 crores.

That's just remittance fees paid by Indians in a year.

Crypto has the potential to bring down this cost to almost Zero.

All this money could go to the people.

Let's join the revolution & find solutions #IndiaWantsCrypto pic.twitter.com/zeNZ6FQgw7

— Nischal (WazirX) ⚡️ (@NischalShetty) February 10, 2019

What’s also important to acknowledge is the fact that in 2018, the global average fee for processing remittance payments was 7% which translates to a hefty sum of money for expat employees sending money to their families back in India.

So, whether it is India or similar cases like these in China or the Philippines when the payments are cross-border transactions and are no longer domestic, it is safe to say that percentage-based fees are often charged to the receiver.

As the report noted:

“In India’s case, most remittances come from the Middle East, where millions of migrants work as labor. But, transaction fees eat into their earnings.

The main transfer methods are through banks, money transfer operators or post offices. But with any method, a sizeable chunk of the money transferred is deducted by the transferring body.”

In that manner, the Bitcoin blockchain network could easily process cross-border transactions at a fraction of the costs involved with these remittance methods. Speaking of, the advantage of Bitcoin is that the fees are never percentage-based. As we reported in November 2018, Binance managed to process $600 million worth of BTC for less than $7.