One year after Banks banned from offering cryptocurrencies to its customers, the Central Bank has decided to limit the offer of these digital investments made through virtual wallets.
The standard presented this Thursday aims to discourage purchases of these digital assets, favorites among Argentines who they try to protect themselves from inflation and the leap in the dollar.
Through communication A7759, the organization’s Board of Directors replicated the premise it had used in May 2022 to block the offer of crypto by financial entities and which forced Banco Galicia, one of the largest in the country, “go back” with a tone and disable this feature.
In two paragraphs, the measure establishes that “the PSPCP they cannot produce or supply to their customers carry out transactions with digital assets – including crypto assets and those whose returns are determined according to the changes they record – which are not authorized by a national regulatory authority authority or by the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic”.
What the Central Bank calls PSPCPs are “payment service providers offering payment accounts” or in Creole, virtual wallets which they had already been forced to list within the agency.
Unofficially it was pointed out that this measure target the big players of this segment, e.g Uala and Mercado Pago. The former already offers this option to its customers in the country, while the fintech giant It is available in other latitudes such as Brazil and Mexico and with this rule he could not attempt to transfer this activity to Argentina.
However, in the Register of Payment Service Providers of the BCRA, there are also other wallets, such as Bitso, Buenbit, Lemon and Ripio, which are those who in the field call as “native encryption” and those that move the largest volume on the market.
This caused confusion in the industry and each of the companies, such as they had not been warned in advancethey had to carefully analyze the impact of the measure.
This is exactly what they answered in Ualá. Meanwhile, Bitso informed its customers through its social networks: “Bitso is an international platform with a global presence. The custody and operations you do with your cryptocurrency are regulated by European authorities. The Central Bank has stipulated that payment service providers (PSPs) cannot execute or facilitate transactions with cryptocurrencies for their customers from their applications or web pages. Bitso is not a PSP“.
The same argument has been made in Lemon: “Lemon is an international crypto app with a presence in several Latin American countries and the cryptocurrencies are held by Lanin Pay, an El Salvador-based company with a crypto license,” they explained in their official account.
“The regulations published by the BCRA apply to Registered Payment Service Providers (PSPs) and prevent them from facilitating or enabling cryptographic operations from their applications and websites. Lemon Cash is not a PSP,” they added.
From below, industry sources complain about the two paragraphs that the law has “they are not clear” and do not establish, inter alia, “deadlines to comply”. At the same time, they explained that although these companies have a PSPPC registered with the Central, this one It is only used to manage client weights and which do not have an actual scope for the operation with crypto.
Many believe that, due to the gray areas allowed by the brief rule, many companies in the sector can continue to operate as before. However, there is a fear that the Central Bank ban will reach them and thus, for example, should stop offering the debit card shopping service in stores, which allows you to “exchange” cryptocurrencies for pesos when making “real-life” purchases.
This is one of the options most exploited by wallets and who have obtained more adoptions among Argentines. And it is no small fact: many freelancers who earn their salaries in dollars use cryptocurrencies as a bridge to bring them into the country and be able to spend it in Argentina without going through the foreign exchange market, either the official or the parallel.
Indeed, on Thursday evening, one of the first reactions of some players in this market was to ask themselves whether this measure it would not be a layer above increasingly tightened exchange rate stocks.
tro stated: “This is a measure promoted by the banking lobby, which is smoking the Leliq and everything that is thrown at the Centrale to absorb pesos and in return they ask for things. And what they’ve asked for here is to level the playing field, shall we say, since they can’t offer cryptocurrencies.”
The Fintech Chamber, which brings together several companies in this sector, released a tough statement this Friday expressing a “deep concern and disagreement with this measure, whereas it limits access to a technology that offers multiple benefits and opportunities for our society”.
“Measures such as Communication “A” 7759 hinder and undermine progress e the free choice of citizens who seek alternatives to protect their purchasing power in a context of accelerating inflation”assured the letter, in which the agency is also invited to dialogue to review the implications of this decision.
Source: Clarin
