4 Ways The Blockchain Will Change Payments As We Know It
Tags: Payments, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Community, Technology

Interest in cryptocurrencies continues to soar and the technology needed to make them more usable on a daily basis is improving too. Soon your phone will be the only wallet you need.

While stacks of payment apps already exist, blockchain-based DApps — like ours here at Pixie — offer additional functionality which we’re convinced will help make crypto more mainstream.

Let’s take a closer look at several ways that payments and transactions are becoming faster, safer, more user-friendly and rewarding thanks to blockchain technology.

Faster Payments

Cryptocurrencies could soon formally throw down the gauntlet to major payment providers — the MasterCards and Visas of this world — as the speed at which their blockchains can process transactions better matches the fast-paced needs of modern commerce.

As an example, HSBC has already performed commercial transactions using blockchain technology, which involved a bulk consignment of soybeans that was shipping from Argentina to Malaysia. The transaction was executed within a record time of 24 hours, compared to the standard period of five to 10 days.

Bitcoin might be the best known crypto coin but given that it can only process 7 transactions per second; meaning its blockchain is among the slowest. By comparison, the Ethereum blockchain can do more than double that: around 15–20 transactions per second.

However, reports show that the current winner is Ripple, which can tackle 1,500 per second — not far off Pixie’s preferred ‘Stellar’ blockchain which can process 1,000 transactions in the same timeframe.

Anonymous Transactions & Secure Wallets

As well as speed, one of blockchain technology’s biggest selling points is security. The vast majority of cryptocurrencies are decentralised. This means that no single person, bank, or authority controls them. Blockchain transactions are verified anonymously by a vast network of computers.

Similarly, those who buy any amount of crypto store them in a ‘wallet’ which is a digital storage system identifiable by a 25–40 character long string of letters and numbers. And most wallets can only be accessed using two-factor authentication on a personal piece of hardware.

User Friendly Payment Interfaces

The app economy has been thriving since the arrival of smartphones and many blockchain companies are leveraging user popularity to create simple and intuitive front-end interfaces; backed by powerful back-end technology. Here at Pixie, our payment app uses simple QR codes. The merchant simply scans a customer’s screen with their own phone, before the customer selects their preferred payment type: which could be either their local fiat currency (wherever they are in the world) or they could choose to pay in PXE — our native token.

Better Consumer Rewards

One of the best things about blockchain technology and the creation of native token ecosystems, is the way that value gets passed back to the user. In Pixie’s case, customers receive our PXE tokens as a reward for supporting independent businesses: crypto that they can spend them at other participating local cafes, bars, restaurants, and stores. It’s a world away from the usual coffee shop ‘stamp’ cards, and much more transparent than the store cards offered by big chains.

Anywhere in the world, they would own a world-wide currency for independent businesses, the PXE token.

Ultimately, the use of blockchain technology supersedes standard and digital payment services in many different ways. Major banks are already integrating ‘cardless’ payment apps into mobile services — which is great. But until they can align the flexibility of these services with watertight security and better rewards, decentralised services will maintain their edge.

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