Research: In 10 Years Bitcoin to Surpass PayPal, Visa, MasterCard in Payment System Industry

Bitcoin has long been compared with its mainstream competitors for transaction volume, speed, and cost. In terms of scalability, Bitcoin has famously lagged behind other big players in the payment processing market. However, in some aspects Bitcoin has already surpassed its competitors according to a recent research report put out by cryptocurrency analysis platform, DataLight.

The report shows that Bitcoin outperforms the likes of Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal in the transaction volume category to become the most famous payment system for high volume transactions.

According to the report, a whopping $3.4 trillion was transferred through Bitcoin in 2018, surpassing PayPal by a magnitude of 5-8 times. These statistics have surprised the community as most were expecting a much lower number because of the bearish market that’s dragged for longer than a year now. However, multiple reports put out by crypto related companies from all parts of the industry has shown that while big cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have lost in price during the current bear market, they’ve gained a lot of ground when it comes to adoption and transaction volume.

The report also reveals that the average Bitcoin transaction volume was 450 times higher than Visa’s average, which is another big achievement since Visa has always been hailed as the king of transaction processing. During 2018, Bitcoin transaction fees have fallen dramatically; the charge of $0.20 on average per transaction regardless of the amount transferred is much lower when compared to the traditional transaction systems.

There are still some important aspects where Bitcoin is lagging behind its competitors. The infamous scalability problem of Bitcoin is still very much unsolved. This translates to Bitcoin’s comically lower transaction processing power when compared to Visa and Mastercard. Specifically, at this point in time PayPal still outstrips Bitcoin by almost 60:1. For Visa and Mastercard, the difference is somewhere around 9,000:1 and 6,000:1 respectively.

However, in its report, DataLight projected a bright future ahead for Bitcoin if it would stay on its current path of exponential growth year after year. The report claimed that in the next 10 years, Bitcoin could surpass all the big players in the market if it keeps up the current growth trajectory. Bitcoin is already a preferred method of payment processing as compared to wire transfer and other standard methods. DataLight attributes Bitcoin’s advantages against its competition to its decentralization.

Interestingly enough, all current three leading payment processing players – Visa, MasterCard and PayPal – have been trialing all sorts of crypto/blockchain ventures over the past year.