Are cryptocurrencies the cheapest solution to send money?

Written by Davies on send money / Reading time: 4 minutes.

There might be many very diverse reasons for which any given person would want to send money out of the country in which he usually lives. The most usual motivation is being an emigrant who went abroad searching a better life quality; in Spain, for example, there are large amounts of population coming from places such as Colombia, Venezuela or Argentina. These workers tend to send large amounts of money to friends and relatives back home in order to help them sustain their economies; in fact, there are countries where these family remittances have become one of the main sources of income for survival.

 

Sending money abroad can be interesting also for other reasons. An international transaction is performed, for example, whenever we buy any product in a website located beyond our borders, which is an increasingly more common business due to the growth of digital commerce. Solidarity approaches between countries in the form of donations or loans at low interest rates can also fit this category.

 

Although sending money abroad is nowadays very ordinary, it still involves several problems and drawbacks that, using only traditional means, are hard to solve. Fortunately, there currently is a technological alternative which helps us to overcome many of those: cryptocoins. Would you like to know how can they help us in such a complex task? Keep reading, we’ll explain in the next few lines!

 

Usual problems when sending money abroad

 

As we were saying, sending money out of our country is a delicate operation which, potentially, can become really complicated and make us go through hard times and incur in large costs. Let’s check out some of the most conflictive aspects we could have to deal with:

 

  • Currency exchange. As anybody who has ever travelled around the world knows, not all countries use the same money units. While in Spain and other close nations we pay with euros, in the United States they have dollars, the British still think in pounds and in South America they handle diverse names: pesos, bolivars, guaranis, etc. The problem is that exchange rates among all them aren’t fixed, but fluctuate depending on political and social issues in every land. Besides, the process to perform those exchanges may take some time (especially if the destination country is relatively exotic and its currency is hard to obtain) and may be charged with fees that sometimes are rather high.
  • Time required. Precisely, depending on the circumstances, getting certain kinds of foreign money can take up to days only in paperwork. True, there are exchange offices where it’s done immediately… after paying the corresponding fees. On top of that, maybe this procedure needs to be completed in person, so the time we take to arrive to the bank branch or the exchange office (both for the sender and the receiver of the money) and the queues we’d have to wait in their premises must be also considered.
  • Bureaucracy. It often happens that, due to the situation the destination country is going through, the process becomes even more complicated than expected. Paperwork and more paperwork can delay our delivery further, or maybe unsuspected extra costs pop up.
  • Safety. Sending money abroad, as we see, means quite a bunch of expenses and processes that often take place hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. It’s not hard to lose track of the operation letting any ill-intentioned person meddle and try to scam us and steal all or part of our money.
  • Costs. Ultimately, since we’re speaking about money, it’s all about this! As simple as it sounds, sending money costs money. But it can cost a reasonable amount or, for many reasons, it can rise up to insane levels.

 

How can cryptocurrencies help us reduce costs when sending money?

 

Against this background, cryptocurrencies such as Davies become a very useful way to ease and cheapen the process of sending money abroad. To realize why, we must understand what are they about. Cryptocoins are no other thing but virtual coins, that is, currencies that work only throughout the net, without any physical support.

 

This means they don’t depend on any public or private entity, any government, to back them. Indeed, they’re completely decentralized: the only thing that determines their value is the activity that users perform with them. That’s why we can afford to forget about the policies of this ministry or of that bank.

 

Being on the Internet, cryptocurrencies lack any time or space problems related to physical supports. Transfers happen instantly: they’re completed in only a few seconds, no matter if the receiver of the money is in the same room or in the other side of the world. Besides, no travel to any office is required to complete the procedure: you can manage yourself your money from any place with internet connection, that is, anywhere with coverage in your phone.

 

Regarding safety, blockchain technology makes cryptocurrencies a scam-proof financial tool. The system is based on the fact that all operations are logged in a block in a chain, linked to the previous and the following ones, in such a way that it’s impossible to delete or modify them without affecting the others. Therefore, any exchange performed with these coins can be tracked to ensure its legitimacy.

 

All these advantages impact on the final goal when sending money: costs saving. Cryptocurrencies are currently the most efficient option to make your remittances reach their destination quickly, safely and spending little amounts. But apart