Bitcoin 'Superior' To Existing Payment Systems: Strike CEO

Jack Mallers, founder and CEO of payments application Strike believes Bitcoin can bring the first real change to the payments industry since the invention of the credit card, David Hollerith reported for Yahoo Finance.

Photo Insert: It's argued that to reap the potential benefits, consumers and merchants don’t even need to touch Bitcoin.

Trading just above $41,000 as of Tuesday afternoon, down about 2% over the past month, Bitcoin is used primarily as a store of value asset that critics and long-time investors agree trades like risk-on equity, making it much less useful as a medium of exchange than cash.

But Mallers argues that Bitcoin’s underlying network makes it the world’s most efficient payments network “if harnessed correctly.”

He contends that "using Bitcoin as a payments network is superior to card processing networks or bank networks or remittance networks like Western Union."

To reap the potential benefits, consumers and merchants don’t even need to touch Bitcoin, he argues.

“This is a payments network that can move value anywhere in the world at no cost in real-time and anyone can build on top of it. It's more inclusive, more innovative. To the consumer who's remitting money or buying Chipotle, they don’t know Bitcoin is involved so whether you want to have a stablecoin, a Euro, Starbucks points, it's the payment network that facilitates the settlement of value that’s the disruptor here,” Mallers told Yahoo Finance.

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