The ‘eBay of Latin America’ Announces Bitcoin Plans

[mtnsaa]

MercadoLibre, Latin America's answer to eBay, has announced it is integrating bitcoin into its payments platform, MercadoPago.

In an email to users, the marketplace said the initiative would keep its merchants "one foot in the future".

http://www.coindesk.com/the-ebay-of-latin-america-announces-bitcoin-plans/

This is big news since South America, especially Brazil and Argentina are adopting Bitcoin much more quickly than other countries due to fluctuations in their national currency. If Bitcoin actual establishes somewhere as a mainstream payment method, it would be in these countries and they could be come a beacon of hope.

[pawel7777]

That's indeed a big news.

MercadoLibre.com (literally "free market" in Spanish) or MercadoLivre in Portuguese (Brazil, Portugal) is an Argentine online marketplace dedicated to e-commerce and online auctions. eBay is the largest common stocks owner in MercadoLibre, with 18.40% of total common stocks. eBay entered into a strategic alliance with MercadoLibre in September 2001. MercadoLibre is Latin America's number-one e-commerce site.[citation needed] It is currently present in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Portugal, Uruguay and Venezuela.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MercadoLibre.com

That could help them expand globally to international markets, if that's what they aim at all. As for now there's not even English version available.

[Guido]

very big news, thankyou o/p and coindesk

one thing people in arrgentina and brazil etc do not want is fiat junk that is less every day
this way they get bitcoin for selling unwanted items plus can get useful (for the time being) u.s dollars in return also

also interesting to note from comment above ebay own a chunk of company, hopefully they move forward with putting bitcoin integration on ebay itself

this is when i sell the mountain of collected junk in my garage 

[mtnsaa]

Yes I forgot to comment on that, I know Mercado Libre is not actually owned by eBay but maybe they are actually testing the waters, if this goes well in the region maybe they can adopt it worldwide. Remember about recent split between Paypal and Ebay?

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Good news, but let's see if they actually do implement bitcoin into their payment systems before we get too excited. I must have seen over 100 reports over the last few years of companies 'thinking about' using bitcoin but never actually doing anything about it.

Less talk & more action hopefully.

[NorrisK]

Lets just hope that people also actually get paid in bitcoin and not in just regular fiat, as we would still be at square one then.

No Bitpay, just payments in bitcoin, that's what we want to see!

[Mickeyb]

These are huge news indeed! Thanks OP for sharing it.

It doesn't surprise that Brazil and Argentina could possibly be adopting crypto currencies faster than the rest of the world since they have a bad taste in their mouth since the last financial meltdowns, especially Argentina.

This could be a nice base for Bitcoin, South America is a huge market. Slowly but surely Bitcoin is getting under the radar.

[Guido]

Lets just hope that people also actually get paid in bitcoin and not in just regular fiat, as we would still be at square one then.

No Bitpay, just payments in bitcoin, that's what we want to see!

agreed

however that would be notoriously hard to do and slow

think it will probably be bitpay, which is far from ideal but quick

it will probably take the price DOWN, like when other big sites have adopted

[mtnsaa]

Mercado Libre is huge over here in South America. Bitcoin has many advantages in these countries compared to others, mostly because of the fluctuating currency. Many people use it but it's not mainstream. This is huge exposure to average people. A similar thing happened with the alliance of Xapo and Taringa, which a network similar to Reddit. They are paying content creators and members who create quality posts via Bitcoin.

[7788bitcoin]

This is an excellent news of another merchant accepting Bitcoin. Hopefully this will bring in more consumers to the bitcoin community- this is what we are lacking at the moment.

[belmonty]

Its share price hasn't been doing very well over the last six months. Some South American countries must have been suffering a similar fate to China and having a downturn that wipes out share value. MercadoLibre might be attempting to bounce back by considering adopting Bitcoin. How will it deal with disputes if it can't charge back Bitcoin transactions?

[gentlemand]

Online commerce in countries with shitty currencies is where merchant adoption really counts. First world stuff is a publicity pose in the main, this would be genuinely useful for people.

[Kakmakr]

Its share price hasn't been doing very well over the last six months. Some South American countries must have been suffering a similar fate to China and having a downturn that wipes out share value. MercadoLibre might be attempting to bounce back by considering adopting Bitcoin. How will it deal with disputes if it can't charge back Bitcoin transactions?

They can implement some sort of Escrow service or use a 3rd party payment processor with consumer protection. I would rather deal with the odd disputes than having to put up with the fluctuations in their national currency.

It's still a bit of good news, so let's enjoy it. It cancels all the bad news.

[Denker]

Online commerce in countries with shitty currencies is where merchant adoption really counts. First world stuff is a publicity pose in the main, this would be genuinely useful for people.

Agree. Countries where the currency has "less intrinsic value than goat shit" (Andreas Antonopoulos) should be the first targets of Bitcoin to get a bigger adoption rate. Sounth America seems to be right continent for that.

[doublemore]

Its share price hasn't been doing very well over the last six months. Some South American countries must have been suffering a similar fate to China and having a downturn that wipes out share value. MercadoLibre might be attempting to bounce back by considering adopting Bitcoin. How will it deal with disputes if it can't charge back Bitcoin transactions?

You'd probably fund your account with bitcoin or something and they then make charge backs? god knows.  Ebay share price went down also but that was due to paypal split.

[capoeira]

Its share price hasn't been doing very well over the last six months. Some South American countries must have been suffering a similar fate to China and having a downturn that wipes out share value. MercadoLibre might be attempting to bounce back by considering adopting Bitcoin. How will it deal with disputes if it can't charge back Bitcoin transactions?

They can implement some sort of Escrow service or use a 3rd party payment processor with consumer protection. I would rather deal with the odd disputes than having to put up with the fluctuations in their national currency.

It's still a bit of good news, so let's enjoy it. It cancels all the bad news.

OLX is gaining market here in Brazil. Mercado Livre is just too expensive for sellers

[mtnsaa]

Yes OLX it's taking a huge dent at the market, but it's kinda craiglist I think isn't it? There's no reputation/ratings, etc and payment is handled offline. I think both services can co-exist.

[languagehasmeaning]

This is very good news. Bitcoin continues to make inroads in a lot of important places.

[capoeira]

Yes OLX it's taking a huge dent at the market, but it's kinda craiglist I think isn't it? There's no reputation/ratings, etc and payment is handled offline. I think both services can co-exist.

sure they can. Mercado Libre is huge

[ajareselde]

Good news indeed. I just hope they play it out right, and avoid creating some excuse to attack bitcoin even more than it is today, due to
few people/merchants/dealers exploiting the anonymity to their advantage.