Mycelium Launches Bitcoin Credit Card

Mycelium, a well-known Bitcoin company that provides mobile wallets and P2P transactions, has released their long-awaited card. A useful feature for users is that no internet connection is required when transacting with each other. “We launched our credit card product two weeks ago at “CARTES SECURE CONNEXIONS”,” Mycelium CTO, Alexander Vasylchenko confirmed to CoinTelegraph. This is the largest global project that brings together key decision-makers from around the world in the payment, identity and mobility ecosystems.

Useful features

Mycelium can complete transactions between cards and between consumers and merchants. The payment system only revolves around card-issuing consumers and distribution center merchants. Since the system's record tracking and security are based on the blockchain distributed ledger, the physical infrastructure is simple and cheap.

The hub transmission information between the card and the distributed ledger infrastructure does not contain any sensitive data. A transaction is immediately forwarded to a server, which sends it to the distributed ledger. For this purpose, the data in the card does not need to be encrypted.

Mycelium and other payment systems

The essential difference of Mycelium compared to other payment systems is its low operating cost. It does not require any network deployment and thus does not incur any network maintenance costs. Its operating cost is much lower than traditional payment systems, where issuers, acquirers and multi-processors each get their share of the interchange fee.

Jack Cheng, head of media and marketing at ANX International, a company that provides a full suite of blockchain solutions for the global market, commented: "There has been too much focus on the technical aspects of Bitcoin. This has slowed down the full adoption of these technologies by merchants and businesses without technical expertise. We see that these things have to improve and make business simpler before consumers can adopt them. Businesses and consumers are practical and look for solutions that can help their business move forward or improve their current situation, not necessarily what is the latest technology."

Unlike traditional payment systems, Mycelium does not require merchants to purchase POS terminals, acquirers to build servers, processors to build large secure data centers, or issuers to build complex and expensive issuance procedures and hardware. The company said it provides technology designed to connect consumers and merchants in the most simple, familiar, reliable and convenient way.

These days, what is mainly shown is the gap between what society can achieve with technology and the regulatory framework that allows it to be implemented. This is why the current setup looks technically complex: a consumer with a card, a merchant at a hub, and nothing else but a distributed ledger.”

Of course, businesses offer traditional debit cards that enable their customers to pay in stores using nominal currencies, which are not shared with Mycelium. One of them is Bit-X. CEO Alex Schultz, through the marketing department, replied that he could not give an official comment because he believes that Mycelium's product is completely different and cannot be compared with the BitX debit card. But Marco Giovanni, head of marketing at BitX, provided Cointelegraph with his personal opinion on Mycelium:

“You can’t use this card as you wish. It’s not a debit card, it’s actually a Bitcoin card (like a micro wallet). For example: you can’t use this card to buy something at McDonalds or the Apple store, you can use the Bit-X card.”