Coins jangling in a pocket is likely to be a thing of the past if companies that promote virtual currency (VC) have anything to say about it. The attraction of using VC stems from massive credit card hacks to retailers, such as Home Depot and Target — all of which have raised questions among consumers about how safe their personal information is.
Currently, consumers have much of their information on display with their credit card company of choice and, for anyone with mediocre knowledge of technology and a laptop, it means open season. This is why it makes sense to consider how blockchain technologies (i.e., virtual currency) may help.
One of the problems is that there are only about 80,000 merchants worldwide that recognize and use VC, but from a business standpoint, it is worth exploring. Not only does it fit into a global economy, but it also offers consumers a higher level of security. The upside for retailers like Overstock and Dell (which support the use of virtual currency) is that it reduces credit card and debit card fees from 3 percent to 1 percent after the first $1 million in sales, which in turn defrays outgoing business costs and puts that money back into retailers’ bottom line.
While much has been made of VC, it is clear that companies are using it and creating better ways to bridge old-world payment systems and new, coming technological advances. As an example, MovoCash (www.movocash.com) is a digital currency that allows consumers to link peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers that can be spent in-store, through e-commerce and m-commerce.
Consumers link their bank accounts to their MovoCash account for mobile payments with no limitation on the number of supported merchants. Eliminating the need for merchants and consumers to adopt closed-loop systems like near field communication (NFC), such as that used by Apple Pay.
Another benefit of MovoCash is that consumers’ personal credit or bank information is not stored on merchant servers, but rather in a PCI-compliant environment, where tokenized form factors are generated to secure transactions using gateway technology and existing merchant POS terminals.
MovoCash follows bank rules and regulations, which are designed to protect consumers and merchants. The reality is that both are hesitant to adopt VC, which is why MovoCash is working on a product feature called BARK — Bitcoin Account Relay Key — which will allow consumers to convert Bitcoin to MovoCash (in a PCI-compliant environment) and enable them to spend anywhere Visa & MasterCard are accepted.
In this way, MovoCash catapults itself to the forefront of payments by integrating the old-world way of doing payments with new-world technology and advancement, with the opportunity to take a bite out of a $190 billion annual fraud problem for consumers, banks and merchants.

Eric Solis is a fin-tech entrepreneur and innovator, with three award winning start-ups under his belt.