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Bitcoin’s missing link sneaks into main event at Finovate

http://upstart.bizjournals.com/news/technology/2013/09/13/bitminutes-alt-payments-at-finovate.html

upstart.bizjournals.com / By Michael del Castillo / September 13, 2013, 11:22am EDT



The UpTake: Before Bitcoin users see any sort of widespead adoption of the currency it'll need to win over the more traditional financiers. Although Bicoin itself was a no-show at this year's Finovate conference, a hybrid product could show the way forward.
At this week’s Finovate conference in New York, one of the most disruptive innovations in any industry, yet alone finance, was nowhere to be seen—at first. With $1.6 billion worth of the encrypted currency Bitcoin currently in circulation, I was surprised to see so little impact on the traditional financial segments. Until that is, I started chatting with Tom Meredith, the founder of P2P Cash, a free way to send money.

A brochure at Meredith's booth caught our eye: "BitMinutes, Better that Bitcoin," it read.

“There’s kind of a hybrid opportunity here between money transfer, which is heavily regulated, and Bitcoin—not regulated at all—and something in the middle that is prepaid minutes that could be tracked,” said Meredith.

“People are buying and selling minutes on the street corner because in the rest of the world, except the United States, you have to prepay your [phone] minutes,” he said.

Using P2P Cash’s cloud-based interchange, BitMinutes customers can send phone minutes to friends, exchange them for services, or cash them in for traditional currency, according to a document provided to Upstart Business Journal.

Click here to learn about the most popular companies to demo at Finovate this week.

Similar to Bitcoin, BitMintues is an alternative form of payment that could work across borders, and isn’t backed by any country. Unlike Bitcoin though, there are traditional currencies behind the minutes, which could be the type of guarantee users other than early adopters need to open up to the idea of alternative forms of payment.

“You’ve seen a lot of the regulatory news about Bitcoin in the U.S. and internationally,” said Donald Chapman, the company's vice-president of business development. “We want to make it legitimate, bring it above board, and recognize that alternative payments are exactly what people need, what businesses need, and see what we can do to sort of circumvent the more established payment methods that cost businesses money, and cost consumers money,”

Jim Bruene, the founder of Finovate and Online Banking Report, said that most of the companies that present at Finovate had been “vetted to some extent,” but that most Bitcoin companies weren’t ready for that kind of scrutiny.

“Not that it isn’t huge in terms of innovation—off the scale—but it’s not like there’s a bank in the audience that’s going to be buying a Bitcoin platform at this point in time,” said Bruene. Though he did host OpenCoin’s launch of Bitcoin global ledger, Ripple, back in May.

BitMinutes wasn’t officially registered at Finovate (though Meredith's other company, P2P Cash was among the 70+ companies that presented), but Bruene wasn’t surprised to hear that such an exchange platform was there.

“If there’s currency that customers are using, that holds value—it could be a frequent flyer mile or video game money—anything that’s got some tradable value—someone will set up exchange platforms to handle that kind of currency.”

BitMinutes is a subsidiary of the Roswell, Georgia-based P2P Cash. Though not ready for the market yet, Meredith said they’re “toying with structure” and have a “couple customers already lined up,” with an estimated launch time-frame of four months.

As for Bruene, he said he doesn’t own any Bitcoins yet, but “We’re setting up to buy one in the office.” One Bitcoin will cost him $140 at today’s rate, but that’s how it all gets started.