Everything has gone mobile these days, thanks to the ubiquitous mobile phones. Everyone has one, and anyone can afford one. There are over 3.5 billion mobile subscribers across the globe, half of which are smartphones. According to “The Mobile Economy 2014” report by GSMA, at least 2.2 billion users access the internet using their phones (2013). Now armed with this data, we can easily deduce how stiff the competition is in the mobile phone and applications sector. The same holds good for bitcoin apps too. There are so many bitcoin apps currently available in the market, out of which two of them stand out.
Abra
Abra – the name sounds cool, doesn’t it? It stands for A Better Remittance App(ABRA). Launched by Bill Barhydt, former director of Netscape is a P2P money transfer app. Abra allows users to transfer cash anywhere in the world through its network of Tellers. Your money will be converted to bitcoin by your teller and sent across to the intended recipient. The recipient receives the bitcoin, converts to cash though his/her teller of choice. Users handle money in the form of fiat currency while the transfer from one point to another takes place as bitcoins.
Tellers are individuals who act as exchanges (with a personal touch), while every teller has his own transaction fees. Tellers are rated by assigning reputation scores to prevent fraud. Even though this concept is not something out of the blue, the P2P aspect and low transaction costs compared to conventional money transfer methods makes it a fast and attractive cash transfer option. Abra was launched last week and will soon be available for your Apple and Android devices.
Bill and James explain why they created Abra in this post
Wiper
Wiper is a free instant messaging and calling mobile application. An app tailor made for people who value their privacy a bit too much. As its name suggests, Wiper allows users to wipe their chat history clean not just from their own phone but from Wiper’s server and the other party’s device too. Earlier this month, Wiper added a new feature to gain entry into the international remittance market. This newly added bitcoin wallet feature enables users to send bitcoins to their Wiper contacts and also to those without any associated wiper user-id. Sending bitcoin through Wiper is as simple as sharing a file on any chat application. Even those who are not familiar with BTC can easily transact using it. Wiper also allows users to anonymize their Bitcoin transactions and also ensures their privacy by generating a new public key for every transaction.