The financial system seeks that shops offer them but do not expect a demand boom

Although the February 28 was placed as Top Dateand for the financial system to develop and enable the necessary systems to allow Argentines to pay in dollars directly from their bank accounts and that those same dollars are accredited in the account of the bank of whom it charges, Only from March the first movements would begin to be seen. And, although in At official level the expectation is highfinancial market players work with a certain caution.

Is that, once the systems are enabled, They do not expect a demand boomand the use of dollars for digital payments would be focused on certain items, which are already found historically “dollarized”such as of tourism or aesthetic medicine servicesFor example. And, if what happened in other countries in the region is taken as a reference, such as Uruguay where these “bimonnear” payments exist, the expectation is that the impact of these new options is limited.

Although for years that in Uruguay, payments in dollars have been integrated organically as part of the consumption habit, in global terms These types of operations represent only 2% of all digital transactions that are processed in the country. And contrary to what the popular imaginary suggests in Argentina, that the dollars could be used from to pay a soda to a car, the use that Uruguayans gave to this possibility of paying in foreign currency is historically low.

In the neighboring country, The dollars are used to settle air ticket purchases, hotel and some livestock -related operations and industry. In other items, such as the purchase in hypermarket and gastronomy, the percentages of payments in dollars are minimal and directly null when talking about daily consumption such as fuel load.

In the local financial system they agree that the key for more businesses and customers to opt for payments in dollars is what benefits and promotions are behind. Sebastián Calens, Vice President of Global Business Solutions de Fiserv, The digital payment processor that also has experience in Uruguay said in dialogue with Clarion: “The main catalyst for this use will be the level of promotions that customers find in order to choose pay in dollars and the benefits that serve the shops to prioritize these payments over those made in pesos today. ”

The main banks of the country have already homologated their systems with the payment processors, such as Fiserv y Prisma, And they are doing the last tests. As this newspaper could know, the bet is to start going out first with the Ecommerce channels and in a second instance with physical shops and face -to -face payments.

The main doubt lies in the impact that the scheduled debin will have, The new functionality of the immediate immediate debit that will allow businesses and customers to agree that a payment is divided into a certain amount of deadlines and that can be done both in pesos and in dollars. The compensatory camera, Coelsa, has already ready this new system and now subtracts banks adopting it.

As explained in a first -line banking entity, if a trade wants to use andl debin scheduled to offer “payments in quotas” with a debit card on dollarS, you must request this option to the bank with which you operate. “Commerce will have to make an agreement with a bank and the bank what it will give it is the particular service of debitting a certain number of quotas at some time. Financing, rate and all that runs through trade. Also the risk. What the bank gives is the debit service, “they explained.