Adding to the fast developing ecosystem of businesses looking to leverage blockchain technology with remittances, BTL Group LTD. has announced that it will begin showcasing its new technology at the BC Tech Summit on January 18th and 19th in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
They’re launching Interbit, a remittance platform along with a live demo showing the ability to significantly lower the cost of remitting funds from Canada to Mexico and The Philippines. These markets seem to be friendly to blockchain related finance technology as companies such as Bitso and Rebit have also found success there respectively.
We will be showing love demos of our remittance platform at the #BCTECHSummit today and tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/SFYteqW8nX
— Blockchain Tech LTD. (@Blockchainltd) January 18, 2016
It appears that BTL, as well as Interbit, specifically will seek to develop relationships with businesses in the finance space in additional countries which could benefit from the increased efficiency of the blockchain remittance technology as well as those that would stand to benefit from a lower fee-based structure compared to current models. Lower fees associated with this technology may provide for more room for disruption in the current high-cost models many banks and financial institutions uphold.
“Now that core development of the Interbit platform is completed, BTL will be working on the development of strategic business relationships to embed this platform into broad based remittance products, while expanding the number of countries to which customers will be able to remit money,” said Guy Halford-Thompson, CEO of BTL. “Strategically leveraging blockchain technology into our Interbit platform should reduce the cost of remittances by over 80%.”
Interbit, as explained in their press release, is a remittance platform involved with blockchain technology, not Bitcoin. These terms are not interchangeable, specifically in this case. The banking and financial legal repercussions associated with a multi-layered remittance and transfer system using various currencies, including Bitcoin or the blockchain may prove to be problematic from a regulation standpoint depending on which countries businesses operate in. It remains to be seen how Interbit and any of the other remittance platforms, blockchain or Bitcoin-based, will position themselves competitively in relation to both low-fee profitability and regulation hurdles.
While most other large and established money transfer and remittance companies have not embraced Bitcoin or blockchain technology yet, there are some well-know businesses paving the way to future innovations in the space. PayPal has successfully enlisted Xapo bitcoin exchange and wallet founder and CEO Wences Casares to its board of directors to help bolster their future vision towards money transfer solutions with Bitcoin and blockchain technologies.
BTL runs an incubator and accelerator program which attempts to support innovative and disruptive businesses utilizing blockchain technology out of their Vancouver offices. BTL has also started development on its second product offering, BTL Digital Asset Management (“DAM”), an immutable data store built on blockchain technology. By leveraging blockchain technology, DAM seeks to provide enterprise level customers secure data manipulation platforms that can be applied to numerous industries. DAM will have many applications, including to auditing, data security, biometric authentication and settlement.
Image from Shutterstock.