Well, that’s a little harsh. I don’t think I lampoon anyone: apart from anything else Consult Hyperion provides paid professional services to almost every company I mention. The post is about being a critical friend: if I said everything was great and worked perfectly, clients would know I was lying. And since integrity is a very important aspect of the Consult Hyperion brand, I think tempered honesty in the right place is deserved and appreciated. I want payments to work better and I want all of our clients to have great payments businesses. My UK-issued contactless Barclaycard didn’t work in a US contactless terminal: if I don’t blog about it, it will still be true.

I only post about this stuff because I care about it. Of course I don’t expect optimism to fix these problems. But given the projects we are involved in, I do have optimism about the folks who are fixing them, if you see what I mean.

When you have your Bitcoins on your device, they are like cash. They are your responsibility, and you can spend them anywhere in any amount, either for a cup of coffee or to buy a carpet from half way around the world, all from the same device.

The problem described in this chilling post is not one of simple broken technology; it is a problem of the State interfering in money, and its movement.

Square and other companies would love to allow payments world-wide via any credit card, but they and other companies cant because the regulation forces them to artificially constrict what they can offer. Any article that fails to mention this is missing the root of the problem; regulation from the State.

If electronic payments are ever going to be as easy as cash, then the State must be completely removed from the process. Once this happens, then anyone can offer services to anyone else, and interoperability will be the default. It will be seamless, instant, secure and very usable. You will be able to get off of a plane in Jodphur and use your Bitcoins without any problems. No one will be watching you, blocking your transactions or causing you any sort of headache.

And this is another aspect this fine article fails to focus on; the deep and pervasive surveillance that these systems have built in to them. Everything this man did was being watched; where he went, what he spent money on and what he was doing was all recorded by the companies offering him their broken services. Then the most frightening aspect of all; these people can cut off your ability to buy anything or travel by blocking your card. They blocked his card, and his wife’s card also, preventing her from buying food. All thinking people should be very VERY frightened of this. At any time, for no reason whatsoever, your ability to buy food can be blocked by a nameless person in a call centre, or a computer programme.

Bitcoin makes all the bad things associated with electronic money go away. There will be no blocked cards, no surveillance and no interoperability problems. It is cash like electronic money, available world-wide, instantly, anywhere, without friction or surveillance.

Credit cards are a very bad thing, and thankfully they have reached the pinnacle of penetration into society. As they begin to decline and Bitcoin replaces them, we are going to see better security and less of these horror stories. This does not mean an end to call centres where you can scream and shout about payment problems however; what it means is that service centres will actually BE service centres and not surveillance centres.

For example, lets say that you are using a Bitcoin wallet on your Android phone, and want to use Bitcoin to buy a parking space. The machine that takes the payment is broken. You call the service center; they can advise you how to pay, or where to go to pay, or can take payment from you right there and then. You can then have the attendant give you the keys, or in the further future, unlock the car with your phone.

Service centres dealing with Bitcoin payments problems will be there to help you, not to receive your complaints, because Bitcoin is like cash. The power will be returned to the user, and will be completely drained away from the company. Of course, there will be ecosystems where, using the parking scenario again, the car you want to rent can be paid for instantly by transferring Bitcoin between your hosted wallet with Coinbase and the parking companies Coinbase wallet. This opens you up to the same problems as credit cards have obviously, but as is the case with cash, you are not compelled to use these services, and can hold the coins yourself in your own wallet. Bitcoin gives the consumer the ability to choose what way he wants to transact and how deeply he wants to integrate with systems. Credit cards work in the opposite way, its all in or not at all.

These horror stories are not uncommon. Like the PayPal horror stories, they serve to wake people up to the real dangers of a society without cash or Bitcoin.

[Dave Birch] Wait. So Bitcoin being like cash – if it gets lost or stolen, that’s just tough — is a good thing? I think I disagree.

[Dave Birch] Or maybe cartons of Marlboro and some hack silver !!

Credit card fees then need to rise (e.g., more and more merchants bumped to high risk category) so they stop accepting credit cards entirely.

I used my Italian, British and Dutch credit/debit cards in Europe and never had a problem. travelling to a different continent is ridiculously annoying because of all those stupid (and outdated) security measures.
Will you remember to email them next time you have to go abroad?

[Dave Birch] No, of course not!

Enjoyed the post.

The payment service suppliers don’t bank on optimism and neither do the consumers.

Consult Hyperion – leaders in digital money and digital identity, securing tomorrow’s transactions with optimism?

No. Come on Dave. You’re better than that. Much better than that.

So are CHYP. You/they didn’t get the O2 Wallet work, the London Public Transport assignment and the Visa Europe/authentication of government services funding (c.f. news ticker) for optimism.

[Dave Birch] No, you know I’m an essentially more optimistic person David. I’m merely reporting the current poor show as a stimulus to future improvement.