Argentine Startup Bitpago awards Bitcoin credit about wallet
Buenos Aires – at day. Photo by Kevon Dooley via Flickr.com. License: Creative Commons
Bitcoin’s great potential may not be in the first, but in the second and third world. Interest in cryptocurrency is particularly increasing. Bitpago from Argentina now offers the more than 50 percent of the population who have no bank account to pay the option to still pay on a loan – and also receive a discount for it.
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According to pure theory, it should be an antithesis: Bitcoin and loans. Is that possible at all? Yes, the developers of Bitpagos, a Bitcoin Payment startup from Buenos Aires in Argentina, say, who are already offering an online wallet with the subsidiary Ripio, with which people can buy and send bitcoins.
Now Ripio users can also take out a loan with the wallet and thus pay in all shops that accept Bitcoin. To do this, the users have to store their ID, their profiles on social media and their address. After you have made a loan request, the system automatically calculates a score, determines an interest rate and writes the user the amount in Peso well. All of this happens immediately at existing customers and for new customers within a day.
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According to Ripio’s blog, the process causes almost no maintenance and infrastructure costs, since the loans are booked directly in the internal system without middlemen. Therefore, Ripio can offer loans on cheaper conditions than other financiers in Argentina. Customers can choose a repayment mode, either as with the credit card by setting up at the end of the month or by paying installments. The startup wants to address those who do not have a bank account – according to CEO Sebastian Serrano, these are now more than 50 percent of the population in Argentina – and the purchasing power of the population in general increases.
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The Ripio Credit service benefits from the vertical expansion of Bitpagos. The startup is actually a payment provider that allows companies in Argentina to receive payments from both Bitcoin and credit cards. One focus is on hotels that Bitpagos offers to accept payments with about a credit card and receive bitcoins. This reverse variant of Bitpay – where customers pay with bitcoins and retailers receive euros or dollars – should be useful in the Argentina affected by considerable currency fluctuations.
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This wide spectrum of Bitpago service makes it possible for Ripio Credit to not only pay for credit, but also get a discount for it. The online retailer offers Avalanche and the food supplier Today Pido discounts when customers pay with Ripio Credit.
Bitpagos has a financial injection of 600 in summer 2014.$ $. The Digital Currency Group and Tim Draper were among the donors. Draper has at the first auction of the Silk Road Coins 30.000 Bitcoin auctioned and at that time explained to use them to bring liquidity to the Bitcoin markets of the second and third world so that Bitcoin can serve unancitrated. This seems to be successful with bitpagos. The company plans to expand to Brazil in the coming months.
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In South America, an interest in Bitcoin is more and more manifested. With the Mercadolibre, the Ebay South America’s Bitcoins, the largest social network in the subcontinent, accepts Taringa!, pays users for successful contributions in Bitcoin, under Freelancers from South America, order platforms that pay in Bitcoin seem to be attractive, Venezuela has developed into a hotspot of Bitccoin mining, and according to Bitpay, sales in Bitcoin now now now grows as quickly as in South America. On the one hand, the reasons for this are likely to lie in local currencies with a tendency to inflation and on the other hand in an inefficient and bureaucratic financial system.
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