Bitcoin has been around for a decade now and over those 10 years, it has developed a lot of real-life uses. Some of these uses are even changing the world for the better with uses like bitcoin as a way to send cheaper remittances or bitcoin as a way of wealth preservation. What if you’re looking for the little things though? Bitcoin’s got those too. More and more businesses are starting to accept bitcoin so you can shop for home furniture, electronics, food, and many more without having to use a credit or debit card. If you’re lucky, your country might even have methods of paying your taxes and bills via bitcoin.
Paying your bills with bitcoin isn’t something that’s new in the bitcoin world. Living Room of Satoshi, an Australian-based company, is a payment system that allows people to pay their bills with bitcoin. The company has already seen a lot of people using their system to pay their bills and the numbers continue to grow.
What about those that aren’t in Australia? Those countries that aren’t fortunate enough to have a bill-payment system like Living Room of Satoshi? Well, there is a workaround that could help you pay your bills anyway and it mostly revolves around one thing: peer-to-peer bitcoin trading.
Using a peer-to-peer marketplace to pay your bills
Peer-to-peer marketplaces have revolutionized the bitcoin trading industry. The peer-to-peer aspect is the reason people are experiencing cheaper remittances and wealth preservation with bitcoin in the first place. If you insist on paying your bills with bitcoin, then you’re in luck because peer-to-peer finance is here to save the day.
On these platforms, it’s extremely easy to buy bitcoin because of the hundreds of payment methods available. The payment methods range from something as common as credit or debit cards to things more unique like gift cards. Another important payment method on peer-to-peer marketplaces is actually “bill payment”. This payment method entails asking people to pay for your bills in exchange for some bitcoins. The process of this payment method varies per peer-to-peer marketplace (assuming that the platform even has this payment option) so to properly execute this kind of trade, you’ll have to do a bit of research on your platform of choice.
Generally, you’ll have to sell your bitcoins for this payment method then send over your bills to your buyer then they’ll pay for it. You’ll then have to verify this payment so as to make sure you’re not being scammed by the buyer. Once the payment has been verified, you’ll have to give your buyer the bitcoins (or release them depending on if your peer-to-peer platform has an escrow service).
Other ways to pay your bills
Obviously, the peer-to-peer method isn’t the only way people can pay their bills with bitcoin. There are several more such as:
Payment platforms
Just like Living Room of Satoshi, there are some platforms that will actually help you pay your bills easily. Other examples of these platforms include Bill Pay for Coins, Coinsfer, and Welto. On these platforms, you can pay your bills for a small fee. The drawback to these platforms is that they’re often catered to a specific market. Only some countries are fortunate enough to have bitcoin payments cater to their market and if you’re one of the unlucky ones, you’ll probably have to look for another way to pay for your bills with bitcoins.
Bitcoin debit cards
Bitcoin debit cards are considered to be one of the most important developments in cryptocurrency. They’re extremely accessible and they allow you to pay for a bunch of different products and services. These cards convert your bitcoin into USD or EUR effortlessly, making it extremely easy to pay for your bills, especially for recurring payments. Examples of these bitcoin debit cards include Shift, WageCan, and SpectroCoin.
Direct payments
If you’re lucky, some companies will allow you to pay your bills directly with bitcoin. This, of course, depends on multiple variables like where you live and your country’s views on cryptocurrency. The main advantage of paying the company directly is that you’ll be able to save money and time. Since you’re paying them directly, you won’t need to pay for any conversion fees. Not only that, it’s much faster than any of the other methods. Unfortunately, Bitcoin is still in the state of limbo to a lot of countries and without governments knowing how to regulate it, companies won’t be able to implement features like this.
The electronic cash system
Satoshi Nakamoto once described Bitcoin as an “electronic cash system”. With more and more examples like this (paying your bills with bitcoin) coming up, he/she is starting to make more sense. The elimination of physical money is something that could have a lot of benefits. Although there are a lot of communities implementing cashless societies now, not everyone can get their hands on a credit or debit card. Props to Satoshi, he/she was one of the first people to see the benefits of a cashless society and actually created a means in which it could be implemented. Hopefully, this will bring us into an age of mass adoption so that the whole world can see bitcoin in all its glory as we do.
