n the U.S., some of the highest in decades, peaked at around 9% and currently stand at around 8%. Argentina’s inflation might reach 100% by the end of 2022, according to certain reports.
In that sense, people have turned to cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and other hard assets to protect themselves against inflation and circumvent official exchange rates. The Ripple partner, Bitso, has identified this situation as an opportunity to roll out their newest payment solution.
Argentina’s inflation approaching 80% YoY. Source: TradingeconomicsIn addition, Bitso claims that Argentina has some of the largest QR code payment adoption rates in the world. Data provided by the exchange platform claims that 59% of Argentinians have used QR codes for payments, the regional averages stood at 34%. In 2023, 83% of people expect to use this payment method.
Santiago Alvarado, Senior Vice President of Product at Bitso, said the following about their new product:
This launch is a testament to our proactive approach to creating crypto-based financial products that are useful in people’s daily lives while providing a solution to the challenges inherent in the financial landscape of Latin America. This is an especially important product offering for Argentina as it provides users protection from the adverse economic factors such as inflation and currency devaluation.
Ripple Supports Bitso’s Growth In Latin America
Furthermore, Alvarado claims the new product will fulfill one of Ripple’s partner objectives: to provide new use cases and to make crypto more useful. The exchange platform began working with the payment company in 2018 to improve the payment rails available for its customers.
Since that time, Bitso has been able to consolidate its foothold in Latin America becoming one of the largest liquidity providers for remittance in Mexico and other countries. In that sense, the adoption of the Ripple payment solution On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), which leverages XRP, has been critical.