by Yoav Dror, PumaPay CEO

As I was watching the live broadcast of the Falcon Heavy launch last week, I was hit by a certain revelation. Here we are, living in the future, with the most powerful rocket in the human history flying into space, with the potential to go to Mars. It’s not a Hollywood movie: this is for real. I’m watching it on a smartphone from the comfort of my couch as my kids are sleeping next door. By the way, my children have never seen and probably will never be able to imagine the world without smartphones and all this technology. On some level, it’s surreal.

Suddenly, my phone buzzes with an SMS from my bank: ‘Your card XXXX was debited with the amount of …’. My thoughts are no longer with the Falcon Heavy, and David Bowie’s Space Oddity abruptly stops playing in my head. Now I’m trying to recall when I did this minor transaction. Definitely not today. Yesterday? Oh no, it was the day before. It’s just the bank has taken a few days to reconcile and settle this small payment. Not a big deal. Or is it?

How did we end up living in the future with the archaic financial system?

In a relatively short timeframe, we have gone from no Internet to dial up (remember that annoying sound?) to proper connection in every home on multiple devices and the Internet of Things.

We’ve come a long way from being fascinated by big-engine cars to driving hybrids and plug-ins, with more and more governments committing to fully banning combustion engines in the coming decades. Again, we have the Tesla Roadster in space now!

We’re working in cross-border teams, collaborating more efficiently and changing the world faster than our grandparents could ever imagine. But what about the payments system?

Our financial system has not seen a major update since the Medici times when Luca Pacioli invented the double-ledger system more than 500 years ago. In day-to-day life, the introduction of payment cards was a noticeable change, however, they’ve been around since 1950s.

PayPal — which, incidentally, is another Elon Musk’s venture — may feel like a huge upgrade of the payment system, but it does not change its core as it’s built around the inflexible archaic machine of centralized banking.

The change is long overdue and it’s finally coming in the form of blockchain. The first cryptocurrencies may have become a speculation mechanism with no real usability, but Bitcoin and the like have paved the way for the upgraded technology and accessible, user-friendly products. This is what PumaPay is about.

PumaPay combines the best of both worlds: the immediacy, decentralization and reliability of the blockchain and the accessibility of traditional payment methods. We’re building the world where we can forget about bank fees, hidden costs, confusion and the risks of relying on the ‘big guys’ a.k.a. banks and corporations. Just think about it: all the negative buzz about cryptocurrencies and blockchain is coming from the central authorities, be it governments, banks or international organizations — be it directly or indirectly. NASA was just as critical and scared of SpaceX back in the day…

While Elon Musk is working on revolutionizing the space technology and making it accessible for humanity, we’re developing the infrastructure where cryptocurrency can be used to pay for everything — from your morning coffee to the tickets to Mars someday. There’s no way your bank can keep up!

The article was originally published on the PumaPay Blog.

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