There was a time when cross-border remittance was expected to be bitcoin’s killer app.It was a simple equation: the global remittance market is huge, and the (often poor) people sending money to friends and family across borders pay high transaction fees that could (in theory) be reduced with bitcoin transactions.And yet, years later, the giants of the remittance market are far from slain, despite the average fees of 7.5%, and the growing crisis of bank "de-risking" – strategically refusing to process transfers to or from regions considered to present a high risk of money laundering, terrorism or other illegal activities.
So, what exactly are the dynamics of the remittance market that keep Western Union, MoneyGram, etc, at the top of the food chain, and what would it take to chip away at their position? The cost of compliance The first thing that caused over-optimism in regards to bitcoin's potential was a belief that tiny transaction fees would translate into low-cost remittance processing. While the low bitcoin transaction fees represent the cost of actually processing a payment, many companies in the bitcoin space have found that the technical costs are often trivial compared to the regulatory ones.
http://www.coindesk.com/why-bitcoins-remittance-disruption-slowed-to-a-crawl/
