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Election 2024

A Bank In Argentina Is Now Using Bitcoin for Cross-Border Payments

Cryptocurrency trading startup Bitex has trialed a cross-border payments system using bitcoin with an Argentinian bank.

By Nikhilesh De
AccessTimeIconMay 22, 2018 at 2:30 a.m. UTC
Updated Aug 18, 2021 at 9:09 p.m. UTC
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Argentina's Banco Masventas has revealed that starting Monday it will enable customers to send cross-border payments using bitcoin.

A partnership with Latin America-focused exchange startup Bitex, founded in 2014, the news finds the regional bank using bitcoin as a payments rail in international transactions as an alternative to Swift.

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    • Bitex chief marking officer Manuel Beaudroit told CoinDesk that the startup believes this marks the first time that a domestic bank has adopted bitcoin for cross-border payments.

    screen-shot-2018-05-21-at-10-30-22-pm

    In statements, Jose Dakak, principal shareholder of Masventas, credited the move to a broader drive by the bank to enhance its digital, smartphone-based services, as well as to lower the bank's cost of service.

    "One of the actions was to contract Bitex as a strategic partner in the implementation of the Bitex platform for payments and collections operations for our clients abroad," he said.

    While no real-world transactions have been launched yet (the service began today), the bank will soon use bitcoin for real customer transactions, Beaudroit said.

    He told CoinDesk:

    "The customers will ask the bank to do an international payment, and the bank uses Bitex as a provider. For the customer, it's transparent, they don't touch, they don't see the bitcoin. We are a provider for them, and they are not touching bitcoin."

    Argentina flag image via Shutterstock

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