Crypto Version of Paypal

If you have ever used Paypal, you know how easy it is to transfer funds with unnecessary high transactions fees. Thus IOTA is stepping it up with an easy system similar to Paypal, whereby you can send and receive MIOTA (IOTA’s Native Tokens) with an email address.

The feature comes together with REST-API developed for IOTA’s Tangle called delion:api.

According to the announcement, IOTA has silently been working on the feature, and people who are already on delion are already able to use the new system.

Malik Dakdaki, the Co-Founder of delion:api explained how the idea came about by stating in the blog,

“Our first thoughts were ‘Why don’t we do it the PayPal way, where users only need to know the email address as the most used communication channel to send and receive IOTA?’”

The similarity to Paypal means the ease of use will promote IOTA as the go-to cryptocurrency for people who are new to cryptocurrency or are not that tech savvy.

There are plans of an express payment system to delion to ensure that the transactions happen much faster, whereby confirmations are avoided on Tangle.

If Ripple is changing the way traditional cross-border payments are being made and slowly eradicating SWIFT, then IOTA will most probably replace Paypal’s unbelievable online transfers.

Cryptocurrencies vs Paypal

Paypal is a centralised system, thus the transactions fees depend on a body of members, which usually around 5-7%. Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, are decentralised which mean that there are no deciding factors on the transaction fees. The transactions fees are much lower and paid to the miners of the cryptocurrency for validating the transaction.

Thus IOTA has brought in a more decentralised version of Paypal to the world with delion:api.

Paypal transactions usually take 2-3 days and can sometimes lead to funds being stuck for 180 days. However, with cryptocurrencies, you will get it in a matter of minutes if it’s Litecoin, to a couple of hours with a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.

However, one way Paypal beats cryptocurrencies is its user-friendliness. Thus IOTA’s new feature takes cryptocurrencies up a notch rivaling the user-friendliness from the payment giant.

How can it be improved?

A feature of sending IOTA to email addresses not registered leading to the recipient signing up to receive the transferred amount could be a good way of getting a far reach for crypto adoption.

Is the service centralized?

However, enthusiasts have claimed that it is a centralised service.

A Reddit ‘RoqueNE’ explained the centralisation part of IOTA’s new feature-

“So you deposit to a central service and can send to other users of this central service. Which has full control over your IOTA.”

Along with this, there are faults in the system where sending IOTA to external addresses, unfortunately, are not possible.