Paypal. Square. M-Pesa. iZettle. Mobile payments. Mobile Cash. Barclays Pingit. These are some of the buzz companies that change the way we are going to transact. But these companies are disrupting only the payment space, which is a sub section of the social tool Money.
Money is a concept. It’s like Language. It’s not really possible to “innovate” the concept. Language is a social tool for communication, Money is a social tool for commerce. Currency is the thing that enables the use of the concept Money the same way words enable the use of Language. How do you transmit words from one person to another? Using your voice. Using a written documents. Etc. Telephone was an innovation that changed the way we can transmit words from one another. The text message changed the way we transmit words from one another. But neither the telephone nor the text message changes the concept of Language nor the words themselves. There was some change to words, for example the extensive use of shortcuts, like “how R U ?” etc. but these are minor modifications.
Money is like Language. Currency is like Words. And payment platforms are like the telephone or text messages.
Square and Paypal innovate the payment space. Bitcoin innovates the Currency space. Both Square and Paypal would be able to change the way we transact Fiat Currencies, and the way we transact Decentralised Crypto Currencies.
Money is Money is Money. It’s a social tool, it’s a concept that needs Currency in order to be operational in the real world. Currency is the technology, the infrastructure, the ecosystem to operate the concept of Money. Every Currency, Commodity Currency (Like gold), Fiat Currency (Like Dollar), or Decentralised Crypto Currency (Like Bitcoin) have many components, many parts of the infrastructure. Payments is just one part of this infrastructure.
Eleven Thirty PM 