Latin America: Millions Can Now Move Fiat in and Out of Crypto Easily

Latin America continues its march into the newest global frontier: cryptocurrency.  

Exchanging various global currencies into cryptocurrency has been historically challenging. But pockets of Latin America have been early adopters. The region has been making international news for its innovative applications of crypto in everyday life. Their strong cryptocurrency infrastructure is creating a very friendly environment for businesses and developers who want to go all-in on crypto.

A new collaboration in Latin America could bring the region even further into the crypto frontier. Today, Wyre have announced an integration with Stellar. The aim is to allow millions of people in Brazil and Argentina to switch from local currencies into digital assets and back again at lightening speed. With this technology, Latin American developers and businesses who want to use cryptocurrency transactions can easily expand into new regions and accept new forms of payment.

The new collaboration allows everyday users to utilize Argentinian Pesos or Brazilian Reals to buy crypto. Then they can use the crypto to pay for items or services. And they can cash out again into fiat currencies just as fast.  

Latin America: Crypto for the masses

Wyre is a fiat-to-crypto and payment infrastructure company. Focusing on developers, the company provides easy-to-integrate APIs. This enables thousands of developers to bring crypto to the masses. So far, Wyre has ‘on-ramped’ over 15 million end users to their partners. They have also processed over $10B in payments since inception.

Wyre claims that integration between Wyre and Stellar will allow for the democratization of finance in one of the largest emerging cryptocurrency markets. They also claim that there will be greater access to digital capital with a more secure system.

Wyre will work with Settle, who will provide the infrastructure needed to process cross-border transactions, payments, and digital assets.

Billions Added to Crypto Life

Ioannis Giannaros is the CEO of Wyre. He says that as billions of people are added into a brave new world, Wyre needs to move fast on making the transition as seamless as possible. “This integration gives our partners easy access to some of the largest countries within Latin America and provides millions of people access to the crypto economy. This first integration will create local fiat on and off-ramps and enable individuals and businesses to move local currency seamlessly in and out of cryptocurrency.” 

Erich Grant is the director of business development at Wyre. “Building the cryptocurrency infrastructure to be more accessible is critical, especially as cryptocurrency becomes a more popular form of payment. This integration with the Stellar Network is only the first step and we’re hopeful it can be the blueprint for similar infrastructure to be integrated into other local fiat channels in the future.” 

The integration uses Stellar’s SEP-24 protocol. It is claimed that this will enable easy and safe transfers of value across the network. And this will be at a fraction of the cost of traditional payment rails.

Cryptocurrency continues to become more widely used. Creating a seamless process for converting local currencies into digital assets is on a lot of people’s wish list. The days of fast borderless payments in a global sense is getting ever-closer.   

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