[2018-05-22] Argentina's Bank Masventas adds Bitcoin Payments

[ivanpoldark]

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.

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.

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."

https://www.coindesk.com/bank-argentina-just-added-bitcoin-cross-border-payments/

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[Carlton Banks]

That's significant news, although it will be more significant once Masventas have been doing this without problems from the Argentine government.


Of course, I'd prefer to see people move away from using banks, but it's interesting that using SWIFT has become so much of a problem in Argentina that even banks are going elsewhere. Hopefully, some Argentinians who are still wary of Bitcoin will begin to change their minds once they hear this story, and use Bitcoin directly.

And this is a very public way of undermining the "mass extinction" prediction story from a few days ago; there will be no Bitcoin extinction as long as there is still Bitcoin demand.

[1Referee]

That's significant news

I don't think I have ever seen you consider something to be significant news. Definitely refreshing.

although it will be more significant once Masventas have been doing this without problems from the Argentine government.

It's normal. If the current system (that we nearly all consider to be rotten to the core) doesn't cause you any sort of problem, what incentive will there be for you to use an alternative? The more this shitty system works against the people and the regular economy, the more they will be tempted to ditch it and use something else. Bitcoin is THE safe haven asset, and that in several fields. At the end of the day, it's action = reaction that we see happen now Bitcoin is an available option.

[richardsNY]

The more this shitty system works against the people and the regular economy, the more they will be tempted to ditch it and use something else.

That's my thought as well, and I am happy seeing that governments shoot themselves in the foot like this. It's starting to become more obvious in recent times that everything the government is doing works against them -- every time they mess up it creates an even larger gap between them and the regular folks. People were forced to swallow everything because there was nothing that offered an escape, but these days are over. I seriously hope that enough people will wake up and start forcing through much needed changes, because it's the mass that makes the difference. It won't be an easy goal to achieve, and will likely take a good number of years to notice a real difference, but freedom is worth fighting for.

[prehisto]

I think this is great news and a bit surprising for me to see such event, was not expecting to see something like this so soon. I hope hey will implement block chain in their business in such way that they can give a positive feedback to other banks in region thus promote block chain solutions.

[BitHodler]

It hopefully will function as benchmark for other financial institutions to do the same. Currently they are still trying to prevent Bitcoin from gaining ground, especially within their industry, but resistance will prove to be pointless.

Eventually the main goal will be that financial institutions allow these transactions to be initiated from within their own platform rather than to rely on external parties. This is probably going to require proper regulations.

It's mind boggling how Bitcoin in its entirety has managed to grow this large within such a short period of time. Financial institutions labelled Bitcoin as fraud in the beginning, and now they are using it, how ironic.