PayPal charges 2.5%+ if your friend is in a different country using a different currency, if their country is supported at all.
And Lord help you if the amount is 'too large' or if they think it's actually a business transaction or if any other of their fraud filters are triggered. It could be 6 months before either of you see that money again.
Exchanging between bitcoin and another currency also imposes a fee, so that is not an apples to apples comparison.
People in different countries use different currencies. Even if the Euro is a stronger currency than the Nigerian naira, you're still going to want to use the naira in Nigeria.
Why? Because that is what people use to pay their taxes, and that huge entrenched demand creates a de facto common currency even without de jure legal tender laws.
> Exchanging between bitcoin and another currency also imposes a fee, so that is not an apples to apples comparison.
No, but exchanging Bitcoin for fiat is a lot cheaper in my experience than fiat-fiat. 0% - 0.5% vs 1.4% - 3.0%.
I'm not sure what the rest of your post has to do with Bitcoin vs. PayPal for personal remittance. I don't think Bitcoin is a good currency, but it's great at medium value and cross-border remittance applications and I've used it successfully many times in that capacity (I used to be a digital nomad).
The relevance of the second part of my post was that it is as unrealistic to expect everyone in the world to adopt bitcoin as it would be to expect everyone in the world to adopt the Euro.
And thus, relatedly, that currency exchanges would still be needed constantly under any circumstance.
If it is cheaper to exchange from bitcoin to fiat than from fiat to fiat, that would be interesting. I would tend to question whether it is a tax issue.
Ordering from Amazon used to be much cheaper too, but nowadays it has been collecting sales tax.
My understanding is that, for Bitcoin, this process of being made to play by the same rules has already begun.
For business you can use checks, but the speed is much worse, obviously, even with Same Day ACH arriving.
Paypal seller fees are quite steep, that is true, but I assume mainly that is when they are accepting credit cards. Sometimes that is simply pushed to consumers. Paying your rent by credit card always costs extra, but that is because of the risk of default.
But you can always pay your rent online by ACH without a fee.
