Fintech Digest: eBay vs. PayPal, an international payment system on the blockchain

    Fintech-hello, Habr!

    One of the main topics that spearheads of specialized conferences and columnists in the media are breaking down with spears is which form of cooperation with fintech startup is optimal? Takeover or partnership? And the adherents of each approach give very convincing arguments. There is an opinion, it is time to put an end to this debate. Because the right answer simply does not exist.

    The financial world is changing too fast for the decision to be true and unshakable. Let's look at the story with eBay and PayPal, unfolding before our eyes.



    In 1999, the young, but already very respectable company eBay, listed on the NASDAQ, decided that it needed its own payment system. And she bought the Billpoint service, because it seemed more reliable and calmer. However, by that time, the lion's share of auctioneers was using the newly emerged PayPal P2P payment service, which was originally developed for instant transactions on Palm Pilot smartphones (does anyone remember them at all?), But was perfect for online auctions. In general, P2P payments on the Internet in 1999 was a very cool innovation, which, despite the glitches and very strange work of PayPal support, quickly brought startups to market leaders. eBay honestly tried to develop its service, but as PayPal grew in popularity, it first entered into a partnership agreement. and then in October 2002 I bought the service for one and a half billion dollars. Billpoint was sent to a landfill story.

    For almost 13 years, PayPal was “its” eBay service, which, in general, suited everyone. But at the beginning of 2015, the companies divorced. And until now, they worked in an exclusive partnership mode. Which again suited everyone. And suddenly a bolt from the blue: eBay denies PayPal the exclusivity of payment services and enters into an agreement with the Dutch company Adyen. PayPal will remain an eBay payment provider in the future, and smooth migration to the Adyen platform will not end until mid-2020. And it is possible that eBay will again decide to make the partner its own division.

    Knowledgeable languages ​​say that the reason for breaking up with PayPal was the lack of enthusiasm for the latter to share with the partner the so-called insights - information collected when servicing payments, which is often more expensive than margin. PayPal, which has become a serious financial brand, not inferior to Mastercard and Visa, has been capricious in developing policies for working with different countries. She was no longer very interested in messing around with every little thing. While eBay, under pressure from Chinese competitors, is set to show attention to even the smallest.

    Why this story? Obviously, eBay and PayPal were right in 2002. And no less right in 2015. And now they are right again. The world is changing, and with it, business models and the competitive environment are being transformed. In 1998, a P2P payment was a miracle, and PayPal could charge any commission for it. And at the same time, to openly be rude to users (this is my personal experience, if that). Today, accepting money from a buyer in Singapore and sending it to Dubai is not a problem at all. And PayPal, which bought the online loan operator Swift Financial in the summer of 2017, is very different from itself almost 20 years ago. Modern PayPal intends to seriously compete with Apple Pay / Android Pay / WeChatPay and lend to small businesses. Seriously, why would she bother with low-margin transfers on eBay?

    Everything changes too quickly, and modern "forever" in practice means "a year or two, but we'll see." At the forefront is the product, which is simply obliged to meet the time. And then all these organizational issues are simply not important, they are entertained by shareholders and lawyers. The main thing is that the shareholders, in the course of their games, have enough caution not to splash out the product ...

    XRP Banking Cryptocurrency Does Not Respond to Ripple's Most Important Deal with Santander Banking Group


    At the end of last year, many experts in the field of investing in cryptocurrencies (now lurking) campaigned for XRP. Say, rip is a cool platform for instant money transfers on the blockchain with minimal transaction costs. In the world of bitcoin, they now cost about one and a half dollars, but here - count for free. Experts said that as soon as Ripple goes to banks, the currency will skyrocket.



    And the great news came: the largest Spanish banking group Santander, also having business in Britain and Latin America, concludedan important agreement with Ripple. The group plans from day to day to launch an international payment system based on the blockchain, and the technology will be based on the distributed registry technology according to Ripple. At the initial stage, a turnover of about $ 12.5 million is expected, which is quite a bit. But if Santander really manages to arrange payments in “three clicks and 40 seconds”, Ripple will have technology with proven market efficiency, which now, you see, is very rare.

    This is exactly the news that the experts spoke about. And how did XRP react to it, which collapsed 40% in the previous week? You will not believe, but she continued to fall. And it grew a little bit only with the “depressed” bitcoin exchange rate in a couple of days.

    How is this possible? After all, it nevertheless came true, and Ripple really goes to the bank, and far from the last.

    But the fact is that XRP is not quite a cryptocurrency. Or it’s not cryptocurrency at all, as anyone prefers. Yes, there is Ripple technology with good market prospects. And there are XRP - tokens issued by Ripple and under its full control. 40% in the open market, 20% from the creators of Ripple and another 40% in the stash. How and when to print the last (and whether to print) - no one knows. XRP runs on the Ripple platform, but is not an integral element of it. She can’t even pay for transactions. There is no decentralization characteristic of numerous * coins.

    That is, buying XRP, the user does not have the opportunity to share the success of the platform. These are some ... chips. Maybe they won, maybe not. Here even probability theory does not work. All in the will of those who issued the chips.

    And we again return to where we started. Each time has its own ... features. In the late nineties, when eBay and PayPal entered into a partnership agreement, citizens through funds invested in everything that promised huge profits on the mysterious Internet. It seemed like a normal thing. But the idea of ​​buying some kind of digital chips of an incomprehensible nature would then seem too exotic. Today we know that the word “Internet” alone does not guarantee profit. But XRP capitalization on the morning of February 8 is almost $ 30 billion ...

    We so want to believe in miracles that sometimes they happen. Question in a sign of a miracle, Habr.

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