A major mobile payment processor in Romania, Netopia mobilPay, has just added Bitcoin support to its payment platform. That means that all 6,000 Romanian merchants who are set up with mobilPay are now accepting cryptocurrency overnight, with no development or strategy costs on their part.
Netopia mobilPay will process Bitcoin payments through their partnership with BTCXChange, which charges 0% trading fees. BTCXChange reports that they have 3,000 users and have facilitated the trade of US$2.5 million worth of bitcoins this year.
“Bitcoin’s potential, especially concerning the technology that it’s based on, is phenomenal,” says Antonio Eram, CEO and founder Netopia mobilPay. “[It’s] instrumental for the next evolutionary phase of everything online, not necessarily [limited] to payment services.”
And Eram’s company, which processes credit card payments, stands to benefit greatly. Because credit cards (which were invented before the Internet) contain all the information that’s needed to drain the owner’s account without their knowledge or consent, companies like Netopia have had to build business models around an inherently insecure technology.
But Netopia is about to see the immense cost-savings that comes from not having to store exploitable customer data anymore. They’re about to experience the spectacular security that comes when you decouple private identities from payments.
“We are seeing the start of a new decentralized ecosystem forming and, at the same time, the efforts the community is making for its expansion,” says Cristian Cora, COO at BTCXChange. “The spectacular increase in prices and the fast adoption rate make us believe in a bright future.”
Credit card identity thieves take note—Romania’s shoppers are about to become a lot harder to hack.