South Korea has recently passed a law that legalizes international money transfers using Bitcoin from 18th of July. Though a small thing for Bitcoin, it sure will challenge the traditional banking methods and companies with the likes of Western Union, PayPal, etc.
The amended South Korean Foreign Exchange Transactions Act lets the FinTech businesses to provide the service of international money transfer for small funds would require registration with the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS). The registration would let these companies choose from several methods to send money abroad including Bitcoin.
A company would be required to have a paid-up capital of more than $2 billion Won ($1.7 million USD) and a debt-to-equity ratio of below 200% to apply for the permit. A maximum transfer limit of $3,000 USD monthly and annual $20,000 USD would be set.
While most traditional banks charge 5-6% and take 2-3 days for the transfer to be completed, with the new transaction method FinTech companies would be able to provide the same within 3 minutes at fees as low as 1%.