Living in the world of Paypal and traditional online banking one component of mobile Payments has been missing all along. While we have seen the services provided by commercial banks evolve materially throughout the years their speed of delivery of a transfer is far from instant and not very convenient.
One could argue that Paypal is solving this problem, but it only takes a look at exchange rates conversions to know that the service comes at a huge cost to the end client. Apparently Swiss bank Dukascopy has identified a market which it is aiming to target with a new product.
The Swiss company has announced today that it has founded a new subsidiary Dukascopy Payments. The firm is a licensed EU subsidiary and is 100 percent owned by Dukascopy Bank SA.
Providing an independent platform for transferring money online is a welcome step for the broker, however hurdles for widespread adoption remain in place. The payments platform will be using Dukascopy’s Connect mobile communication service.
The new product will use a user’s phone number as an identifier just like some modern instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp or Viber are. Inconveniences remain in place - while the transfer between electronic wallets of users will be instant, withdrawals to bank accounts from the cloud will still take time.
Exchange rates convenience
The main advantage of Dukascopy Payments will be the exchange rates at which users will be able to transfer money to each other. While this is a major advantage, the payment system is not perfect - while the transfer between eWallet accounts is instant, before making use of the funds a client will have to withdraw the money to his/her bank account.
Dukascopy is aiming to add to the product a prepaid card to sort out this inconvenience for the users. Clients will be able to open their accounts almost instantly based on an electronic Know Your Customer (KYC) ) solution while using their phone’s camera for identification.
Dukascopy has been granted a license on July 29th 2015 and will be shortly introducing the payments solution in September. Users who are using mobile devices already have access to the Dukascopy Connect platform, which will become the base for the new service. Native Windows, Mac and Linux solutions are to follow soon.
