What Does Freedom Mean When it Comes to Payment Transactions?
You worked hard. Now, you can do what you want with your funds. Or can you? With cash being blacklisted for certain payments such as buying homes, due to concerns around money laundering, and in the wake of many establishments only accepting contactless payments in the pandemic era, cash is clearly démodé.
We have to rely on our banking institutions more than ever before to allow us the freedom to do what we want with our cash. Ever been to an ATM to withdraw a chunk of your own cash, only to be told you have reached your daily limit? A limit on your own cash? Something doesn’t add up.
Many payment gateways are creating obstacles to users, these include the likes of Visa, Mastercard and even Paypal who are renowned for blocking users’ funds if they can’t be sure of how they were generated.
The Case of Gaming
These hurdles can seriously affect the cash flow of a business. Look at gaming operators, classically a punter would go to the casino (What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!), but now everything is happening online. The online gaming industry is growing fast, as more people seek indoor stay-at-home entertainment to replace the enjoyment they are missing out on in other entertainment venues. The gaming sector has grown from *$465.76 billion in 2020, to $516.03 billion in 2021, and the industry is expected to jump to $674.7 billion in 2025.
The issue with online gaming is regulation. Even though it is regulated in 85 countries, many companies, operators and banking institutions have been put off of facilitating this arena as a result of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA). This act acknowledges and punishes responsibility for third parties enabling unlawful gaming. Sounds fair enough, but the jurisdictional regulations are extremely confusing and always shifting. For instance if you are in the UK you may legally gamble online, while in the US you may not. How about if a UK cardholder decides to bet on his vacation to the US? The lines are not clear.
Although theoretically, organizations like Visa and Mastercard can legally facilitate gambling transactions, the reality is far different, with transactions regularly being blocked as gateways choose to forgo these kinds of transactions, rather than fall foul of the scary UIGEA act.
This leads potential gamers to find other more unreliable and unsafe ways to fund their accounts, for instance by using prepaid gambling cards or even dealing with shady payment agents. This of course makes deposits and withdrawals inconvenient and just not secure.
Blockchain Beats the Bank
This is where the blockchain comes into its own, with a way to remove human intervention from the payment process, to negate watchdogs and regulators, and even the IRS from sniffing around gaming profits. What you win is yours!
The blockchain validates and authenticates all transactions that pass through it in a trustless way that retains privacy and absolute security for its users. No room for error! One example of a decentralized protocol trying to achieve a unified betting experience across the entire industry is BXTB. They are doing this by partnering with leading operators, platform solution providers and publishers across the globe.
This protocol holds reserves against other stablecoins for its own stable CHIP token. This is based on a low carbon emission mechanism that enables maximum throughput with a Proof of Capacity model(PoC). CHIP takes on the stability of other leading stablecoins which are deposited as collateral and makes transactions super fast while keeping transaction fees ultra-low. This brings the virtue of stability to electronic gaming.
Using the blockchain for betting and generally for payments makes a lot of sense and gives the control back to the user to spend their money wisely, or not. Could this be the future of gaming and the future of payments at large? Only time will tell.