Halil Mirakhmedov, the COO of @wallet, one of the wallets available on Telegram, stresses the need to have alternative payments such as TON and USDT used by the messaging app.
The problem is increases in interchange fees and control of credit and debit card payments.
Telegram: BTC, TON and USDT as necessary alternatives to bank payments
Halil Mirakhmedov, the COO of @wallet, one of the wallets available on Telegram, made his comment regarding the use of TON and USDT as alternative payment services to bank payments.
Here are his words:
“As rising interchange fees continue to hit small retailers as a result of the actions of the consortium of banks controlling credit and debit card payments, the need for alternative payment solutions has never been more apparent.
Peer-to-peer payments processed through widely accessible social media and messaging platforms could enable hundreds of millions of users to buy and sell products at greater speed and lower cost, with more transparency than legacy systems.”
Mirakhmedov wants to emphasize how the need for payment services that lead to disintermediation, such as peer-to-peer, are the solution especially for small merchants.
Peer-to-peer payments used on Telegram are Toncoin (TON), the native crypto on Telegram’s official blockchain, The Open Network, Bitcoin (BTC) and, since last March, also Tether (USDT) in its TRC-20 version.
Telegram: BTC, TON and USDT available to more than 700 million users
Continuing with his commentary, Mirakhmedov then added that payment alternatives to banking, such as BTC, TON and USDT are already available on Telegram to over 700 million users.
Here, Mirakhmedov’s words:
“The advantages of blockchain payment solutions such as @wallet, the cryptocurrency wallet on The Open Network (TON), have only just begun to be explored. And still they already offer a seamless alternative payments service in digital tokens such as Tether tokens (USDt) to more than 700 million users.
TON’s unique sharding capabilities enable the chain to limitlessly scale with user growth, with transactions being processed at the same low-cost, lightning-fast speed regardless of network usage.”
@Wallet is one of 45 wallets supported by Telegram to hold and transfer Bitcoin and TON. Specifically, @Wallet is used to purchase crypto by credit or debit card in USD, EUR and RUB.
The new unlimited bridge and the price of TON
Last month, The TON Foundation, the non-profit association that promotes Toncoin (TON), announced the launch of a two-way bridge that enables continuous transfers of ERC-20 tokens from Ethereum to fungible tokens on The Open Network (TON).
With this unlimited bridge, users will initially be able to connect Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), and Dai (DAI). In the future, more tokens are expected to be added.
Not only that, the unlimited bridge is being tested for integrity and security through a hackathon in 2022, where TON Foundation invited white hat hackers to take action.
At the time of writing, Toncoin (TON) is worth $1.96, in a 15% price dump over the past month, which started at $2.31.
In general, it can be said that the 26th crypto by total capitalization, TON, is following the price trend of major crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have also seen declines in the past month.
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2023/05/18/telegram-ton-usdt-instead-banks/