Introduction to the Different Types of International Money Transactions

by winngie

3 January 2019

International Money Transfer

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Most of us know very little about how the financial system works at the meanwhile we are highly dependent on it. When you receive the monthly salary, when you use the bank card to pay for the bill, when you send the money to others, it’s all about the transaction fashion. The user experiences fantastically influence and push the revolution of financial system. It’s hard to categorize but we still have some clues to observe the system into three historical stages: physical institution, digital service, and invisible currency.

  • Traditional Bank Service

There are three major ways to use the traditional bank services.

The first one is wire transfer. You can send the money to more than 150 countries by over 40 types of currencies. Without doubtfully, it’s a safe way to send your money around the world though it’s slower with the various commission fees. Moreover, for the virgin user, he/she has to open the foreign currency account by the assigned bank and activate it. It takes more times for preparation to wire the international funds.

The second way is through Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). SEPA is the European Union payment integration which aims to simplify the wire transfer in the Euro countries. Due to the same currency and the cooperated financial system, this is the cheapest way to send the money between 28 EU member states, 4 countries from European Free Trade Association, and 2 microstates who signed the agreements with SEPA. That is to say, you must have the bank account in these euro-zone countries and also it only accepts Euro.

Thirdly, it’s the checks. Checks are usually applied for bills or payment since the design is friendly to be used. When you want to send the money to someone domestically or internationally, only do you send via post or the bank, and the receiver can easily deposit based the due date of the check. However, it can be slower and more additional service fees come. Both sender and receiver sides may be charged with the commission. The checks deposits into the receiver’s account may also take few work days.

Of course, the bank system is more reliable but its slowness and red-tape progress also make the users being “kidnapped.” The weakness of the traditional bank system is vulnerable when facing the challenges from the digital technology. Time-consuming and high exchange rates push the traditional bank stepping into online service system.

  • Digital Financial Service

Online transaction becomes more popular than before since the senders do not need to go the physical banks and wait for few hours to only make one transaction.  There are also three major ways to send the capital by internet.  The first one is the traditional bank system which starts to use online banking.

The second one is by the third-party agencies, such as, Transferwise, Worldremit, Winngie, and XE. Each similar but different. They function as bank but it is not. The mainly concept is to work without banks and return the transaction right back to the customers.

The third one links together with the online shopping platform with speed payment which later evolves into the convenient payment method. The classical examples are WeChat pay, Alipay, and PayPal. Taking PayPal as example, PayPal is spawned from the simple concept which allows the users to transfer the funding through online to facilitate the e-shopping payment. This smart idea attracts million members to enjoy this encryption software. People use it to link together with eBay or other online shopping website, do donations, and exchange money with others. Same with the traditional bank system, PayPal users both are required to open the accounts under the PayPal system otherwise the other side cannot receive or send the funding. Unlike the bank system, PayPal are free with basic usage, and you don’t need to submit mountains of document to register the new account.  The weakness of PayPal system is highly exposure to be frauds, unfair high transfer fees, and dependent of internet.

The disadvantages of the digital financial fashion are undermined by cybercrime and low-control of financial risk. Many small-scale banks may lack capacity to enhance cybersecurity. Also, when it is easy to facilitate the financial flow, excessive borrowings and debt occur.

  • Digital Currency

Some say digital currency is a Ponzi scheme. Some say cryptocurrency has already died and resurrected over 100 times during past half decade. Whether the world likes or criticizes it, there is no doubt that cryptocurrency has successfully attracted people’s attention. Blockchain decentralized character makes the users transfer digital currency faster and easier. There is no single location, no holiday and no central authority in between. It is peer-to-peer basis. It means that cryptocurrency returns the transferred right back to its users without time boundary and location barriers.

Unreliable emerging ICOs, small new currency, and cybercrime may crowd the market. Due to its consensus-based network, it is hard to have universal rules to supervise digital currency.  Low-trust operation, virtual assets, and zero tolerate to fix the typo after transferred.

You cannot see your money in reality.

From bank-to-bank service to peer-to-peer basis, the financial world seems never tried seeking a better way for exchange. It not only exchanges the money but also exchange trust. It is also never tried to blow another trend. The trend you cannot repeat. The trend it will rock the old system. Winngie Exchange Money App and some others similar ways are trying to overcome these problems to make life easier.

   Winngie Editorial Department

13:04 Wednesday 21 November 2018

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What is peer to peer and What are most popular P2P mobile platforms

by winngie

3 January 2019

General

Peer to Peer

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Peer to peer is the relational dynamic at work in distributed networks

Peer to peer is there not restricted to technology or P2P filesharing as such, but covers every social process with a peer to peer dynamic, whether these peers are humans or computers.

Peer to peer is particularly expressed in social processes such Peer Production, Peer Governance, Peer Property, Peer Transportation and Peer Exchange.

It’s a way of organizing, and a way of thinking about organizing. It’s also a political and social program for those who believe that in many cases, peer to peer modes are a preferable option.

“What is peer to peer? Here’s a first tentative definition: It is a specific form of relational dynamic, is based on the assumed equipotency of its participants, organized through the free cooperation of equals in view of the performance of a common task, for the creation of a common good, with forms of decision-making and autonomy that are widely distributed throughout the network. 

P2P processes are not structureless, but are characterized by dynamic and changing structures which adapt themselves to phase changes. It rules are not derived from an external authority, as in hierarchical systems, but generated from within. . It does not deny ‘authority’, but only fixed forced hierarchy, and therefore accepts authority based on expertise, initiation of the project, etc… P2P may be the first true meritocracy. The threshold for participation is kept as low as possible. Equipotency means that there is no prior formal filtering for participation, but rather that it is the immediate practice of cooperation which determines the expertise and level of participation. Communication is not top-down and based on strictly defined reporting rules, but feedback is systemic, integrated in the protocol of the cooperative system. Techniques of ‘participation capture’ and other social accounting make automatic cooperation the default scheme of the project. Personal identity becomes partly generated by the contribution to the common project.

P2P is a network, not a hierarchy (though it may have elements of it); it is ‘distributed’, though it may have elements of centralization and ‘decentralization’; intelligence is not located at any center, but everywhere within the system. Assumed equipotency means that P2P systems start from the premise that ‘it doesn’t know where the needed resource will be located’, it assumes that ‘everybody’ can cooperate, and does not use formal rules in advance to determine its participating members. Equipotency, i.e. the capacity to cooperate, is verified in the process of cooperation itself. Validation of knowledge, acceptance of processes, are determined by the collective. Cooperation must be free, not forced, and not based on neutrality (i.e. the buying of cooperation in a monetary system). It exists to produce something. It enables the widest possible participation. These are a number of characteristics that we can use to describe P2P systems ‘in general’, and in particular as it emerges in the human lifeworld.

Whereas hierarchical systems are based on creating homogeneity amongst its ‘dependent’ members, distributed networks using the P2P dynamic regulate the ‘interdependent’ participants preserving heterogeneity. It is the ‘object of cooperation’ itself which creates the temporary unity. Culturally, P2P is about unity-in-diversity, it is concrete ‘post-Enlightenment’ universalism predicated on common projects; while hierarchy is predicated on creating sameness through identification and exclusion, and is associated with the abstract universalism of the Enlightenment.

To have a good understanding of P2P, I suggest the following mental exercise, think about these characteristics, then about their opposites. So doing, the radical innovative nature of P2P springs to mind. Though P2P is related to earlier social modes, those were most in evidence in the early tribal era, and it now emerges in an entirely new context, enabled by technologies that go beyond the barriers of time and space.

An important clarification is that when we say that peer to peer systems have no hierarchy or are not centralized, we do not necessarily mean the complete absence of such characteristics. But in a P2P system, the use of hierarchy and centralization, serve the goal of participation and many-to-many communication, and are not used to prohibit or dominate it. This means that though P2P arises in distributed networks, not all distributed networks exhibit P2P processes. When distributed meshworks, for example interlinking boards of directors, serve a hierarchy of wealth and power, and are based on exclusion rather than participation, this does not quality as a full P2P process.

P2P can be a partial element of another process; or it can be a full process. For examples, the technological and collaborative infrastructure build around P2P principles, may enable non-P2P processes. In the example just above it is the infrastructure of Empire, but it can also enables new types of marketplaces, gift/sharing economy practices, Exchanging Foreign currencies such as Winngie, sharing your car like Uber, or your house Airbnb.  Where P2P is a full process, we will argue that it is a form of communal shareholding producing a new type of Commons.”
Here you go with the Winngie Exchange and Send Money Mobile App to start matching with people around you.

Quoted from Michel Bauwens.

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