Bitcoin is a more viable alternative than American Express

In the traditional financial world, there are only a handful of major players involved with credit and debit cards. Visa and MasterCard are the two largest brands, but American Express is making a comeback. Unfortunately, Fidelity Investments recently announced that it considers American Express to be the underdog, supporting Visa and U.S. Bancorp. Unlike these financial services, Bitcoin does not suffer from cracked support because there is only one currency in the world that works for everyone.

American Express loses ground in credit card market

     Keeping yourself relevant in the traditional financial sector is not an easy task, even in a market where there is little competition. With so few companies actively issuing credit cards, it looks like American Express will lose ground to the competition in the near future.

American Express' profits have not recovered in the past two years after it lost a deal with Costco Wholesale Group, and a 12-year partnership with Fidelity Investments came to an end. Archrival Visa will become one of Fidelity's new partners, allowing the company to offer Visa-branded credit cards to its U.S. customers.

It goes without saying that the credit card market is becoming very concentrated as the number of significant players is decreasing. In the coming time, only Visa and MasterCard will remain strong competitors, which means that financial control of the credit card industry is in the hands of only two companies. This is not a good situation because more competitors in the market means lower fees for consumers and merchants.

     That being said, the new partnership between Fidelity Investments and Visa will offer 2% cash back to customers while also featuring the new EMV chip security.

Bitcoin is not defined by specific deals or strategic partnerships

From a financial services perspective, Bitcoin offers something that credit card issuers can never do: financial freedom. Getting a credit card relies on a partnership between the consumer’s bank and the card issuer, such as American Express, Visa, or MasterCard. If that partnership ceases to exist, there is no way to get a bank card other than to change banks.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, has not experienced these debates and shortcomings. The popular digital currency is available to everyone in the world, whether it is a financial service, bank, government, or any other institution or individual. In fact, it does not matter whether consumers use computers, tablets, or smartphones to access it, because there are Bitcoin wallet solutions in every type of device.

Additionally, Bitcoin allows the end user to have complete control over their funds, as they are protected by a private key that only the end user knows. The private key can be stored online or offline, and can even be tied to the device used for the Bitcoin transaction itself. Given that the private key is a long string of random numbers and letters, it is virtually impossible to crack.

Credit card issuers have databases with complete customer information, including financial data associated with the credit card itself, stored forever. Once a database with complete credit card information is compromised, fraud rates and chargebacks will increase exponentially, causing financial turmoil for retailers and consumers. Bitcoin is a more secure, globally accessible and frictionless financial service product that is highly competitive with established credit card issuers.