marketplace cambiame offers users a different way of buying and selling dollars
Contxto – Currencies in Latin America have had some wacky days and have depreciated when compared to the US dollar. Correspondingly, users interested in buying or selling dollars have questioned the financial convenience of doing so at a bank or your traditional currency exchange business.
But Uruguay-based fintech Cambiame wants to challenge this approach through its P2P (peer-to-peer) currency exchange platform. What’s more, it also intends to expand into Argentina. To that end, it’s participating remotely in an accelerator program known as “Impulso Startup.”
Coworking company A3 and Google for Startups run this initiative in Argentina to help entrepreneurs scale.
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Dollars, dirty money, and Cambiame’s platform
Entrepreneurs Delmiro Costa, Matías Poggio, and Ruben Marquardt launched Cambiame in 2017.
The objective is to connect users with competitive rates to either buy or sell US dollars. Should a person have dollars, they can post a sale price on the platform and interested buyers can view and compare options. Although note that since it’s currently only available in Uruguay and thus, transactions only work with Uruguayan pesos.
For its service, the startup takes a 0.5 percent fee over the transaction amount from each of the participating users.
This type of solution is useful with the current coronavirus pandemic, as it’s not recommended to be out and about exchanging money at brick and mortar businesses.
Likewise, to add supervision to the matter, the startup hopes to be fully regulated by Uruguay’s Central Bank this year. For Cambiame this poses a unique challenge. And that’s because it’s reportedly the first P2P exchange platform of its kind from its native country.
Currency platforms, like digital remit startups, have an interesting future in the region of Latin America given the role immigration plays on these countries’ economies. Though they do require more surveillance so as to restrict fraud and money laundering.
Related articles: Tech and startups from Uruguay!
-ML
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