Bitcoin utility payments are not very popular at the moment. Most such services are designed for users that are already familiar with Bitcoin. Nevertheless, Bitcoin payment services are in constant development. That’s why they foresee growing popularity of Bitcoin utility payments in 2016.
Pay Your Bills from Anywhere in the World
Australian-based service Noghi allows Australians to pay utility bills or invoices directly with Bitcoins from anywhere around the globe. Noghi supports Bpay services which allows people to pay their bills without a bank account.
According to Eoin Mullins, founder of Noghi, the service has just under 100 registered users. The usage activity varies and seems to fluctuate with the movement of the exchange rate. Mullins states that “at the moment people are holding”. He also added that the “need in such services are temporary, until the wider adoption of Bitcoin takes place”.
“As more and more service providers start accepting Bitcoin the less and less services like Noghi will be required. Full adoption of Bitcoin is what we are interested in and as strange as it may sound it is something we are looking forward to. Bitcoin wasn’t designed to have the requirement of a "man in the middle" service like Noghi to operate within society, it is designed for direct payments to be made between the sender and the receiver”.
Citadel of Satoshi
Satoshi Citadel Industries offers a number of Bitcoin solutions for the residents of the Philippines. They provide Bitcoin utility payments in Rebit as an added value option for users, but, according to Miguel Cuneta, Co-Founder and Chief Community Officer of the company, “it is not very popular as of now”.
He told Cointelegraph:
“The bulk of Rebit.ph's transactions are still cash remittances. Bills payment make up a small group of people that do it regularly. I would say not more than 10% of users use this option. As more discover the convenience of this option, then we will see more growth”.
Nevertheless, he believes Bitcoin utility payments have bright prospects for the future. The company “expects a lot of growth in general in 2016, including bills payment”. However, they are not focusing on bill payments only.
“Since this is just an option or added value for users, it isn’t really important for us to focus on bills payment alone. Users will dictate if they want to use it or not and we will adapt to that need as a service”.
Bylls Acquired by Satoshi Portal
Bylls was one of the first services to offer Bitcoin bill payments ever. It is a Canadian-based startup, founded in 2014. Bylls allows Canadians to pay practically any bill, including utilities.
Francis Pouliot, CEO of Satoshi Portal told Cointelegraph that they have recently acquired Bylls, so, hopefully, we will see some changes in the service’s work. According to Pouliot, Satoshi Portal is going to revamp the Bylls website, add prepaid debit cards and allow people to pay any Canadian with Bitcoins (BTC directly to someone's bank account).
The service is designed for Bitcoiners mostly. Nevertheless, Pouliot states “they are currently processing 1 million $ worth of bill payments per year for about 1000 clients”.