Rebittance

"Rebittance" is a term that is being increasingly used to distinguish Bitcoin remittance from traditional remittance. It is the process of using Bitcoin companies for remittance of money overseas in a manner familiar with those who use traditional remittance companies, but at a fraction of the cost.

Traditional Remittance

In 2014, an expected US$436 Billion will be remitted by migrants back to their families in the developing world. The cost of sending all those remittances is estimated at US$47 billion or more than 10% of the entire amount.

In traditional remittances, credit is forwarded through 3 or 4 separate banks or clearing houses before finding their way to their intended recipients. At each step, fees may be applied. Each bank must secure its respective network and facilities and this costs money.

By using Bitcoin, the average cost of remittances could be reduced to $5 Billion, or 1.1%.

Rebittance Services

Rebittance does away with all this by only having a single entity in between the sender and the receiver. Although Bitcoin is inherently designed to be completely peer-to-peer, Rebittance companies are seen as a necessity due to lack of infrastructure at this stage of its development. These organizations purchase bitcoins from senders all over the world and then exchange and remit the local currency to the nominated recipient. Bitcoin remittance companies have reduced the cost of sending money internationally from a global average of about 8% to anywhere from 3% to 1%.

These are the Bitcoin remittance companies to date:

• Beam
• BitPesa
• Bitso
• Coincove
• Payfast
• Rebit.ph
• Sendmoney

Rebittance.org

In October of 2014, the website http://Rebittance.org was created by Philippines-based company Satoshi Citadel Industries as a shared resource about Bitcoin remittance for the bitcoin community.