Bitcoin has unveiled its new remittances API, which allows individuals and financial institutions to send instant payments to any bank account in Mexico and Brazil in less than one second, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine. This API marks the company's expansion into international remittances, with plans to expand services to the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Africa soon.
We're excited to launch our new Remittances API that brings instant, cross-border payments to any app 🚀
One easy integration to send Mexican Peso 🇲🇽 or Brazilian Real 🇧🇷 to local bank accounts in less than 1 second⚡
More currencies and countries coming soon! https://t.co/jiAeh1NhRF pic.twitter.com/R63Z3mNnb3
— Bitcoin Company (@theBTCco) March 22, 2024
“Disrupting the remittance market is a major milestone in our roadmap to providing easy-to-use financial services based on Bitcoin, and has always been a compelling application for the Bitcoin network,” said Ben Price, founder and CEO of Bitcoin. With Bitcoin, payments can be cheap, instant, universal and global.”
By leveraging the Bitcoin network, Bitcoin's remittance API provides a cost-effective alternative to traditional banking methods such as SWIFT, significantly reducing the costs of international transfers. The API communicates with local payment networks in Mexico (SPEI) and Brazil (Pix), ensuring that funds are instantly deposited into recipients' bank accounts.
The remittance market in Mexico and Brazil has historically relied on expensive services such as Western Union and MoneyGram, which charge high fees. According to the World Bank, the cost of remittance payments to Mexico and Brazil is 3.01% and 4.59% respectively, with an average international remittance cost of 6.18%. Bitcoin's API is disrupting this landscape by providing low-cost, instant, and cross-border payments 24/7.
“Cross-border payments as they exist today are broken,” Price continued. “Traditional remittance providers like Western Union are exploiting the world's most desperate populations by charging extremely high fees to send/receive money. Cross-border payments are now trivial thanks to the new remittance API that leverages the Bitcoin network. Our plans include expansion To include more regions and currencies for business and consumer payments. We are very excited to help enable other developers to run low-cost, cross-border instant payments in their apps through simple API integration.”
This launch is in line with Bitcoin Company's vision to provide easy-to-use, Bitcoin-based financial services and build a developer-friendly infrastructure that connects Bitcoin to legacy financial systems. More information about the Transfers API can be found here.
