The Government seeks to create a market to negotiate credit card coupons and make installment sales cheaper

It is an open trading system for credit card discount couponsan initiative that seeks to install the Central Bank with support from the financial sector. The idea is to generate a market where businesses can finance themselves at lower rates. It would work in the same way that the market currently operates. echeqs or credit invoicestwo tools used by both large companies and SMEs.

According to data from Banco Central, Last July they were held in the country 176.2 million credit card payments, for $10.6 billion. In each of these operations, the business receives a “coupon” that represents the promise of payment. This credit purchase is already pre-qualified by the card-issuing bank, which is ultimately responsible for the payment. And, although the operation is authorized in seconds, the business only receives the money within a period of between 8 and 18 business days.

As Payments are guaranteed by the bank, According to the estimates of the Central Bank, this coupon represents “zero risk” of non-payment to the merchant: if the cardholder does not pay his statement, the problem of bad debt is settled between the client and his financial institution, while the merchant collects anyway.

In Argentina, today the volume of operations of these “coupons” is concentrated mainly in three companies: Payway, Fiserv and Mercado Pagowhich are those that function as “acquirers” of that trade; They are the ones who provide merchants with the payment terminals and networks to operate with credit cards.

The merchants They already have the practice of “selling” these coupons, at a certain rate, to their acquirer, in exchange for greater liquidity. This, for the Government, works as a consolidated and captive flow that ends up doubling or tripling the cost of the rate with respect to the real risk that the operation represents.

To solve this, the initiative seeks to convert this deferred flow into individual instruments with their own value and certain collection datesimilar in operation to a deferred payment check or an echeq against a bank issuer.

In this way, the merchant could go to the market to negotiate, for example, a loan directly backed by a first-line entity at its real market value, without being tied to the conditions or withholdings of traditional channels.

For example, a purchase made “in three installments”, could be transformed into three independent coupons with staggered maturities of 30, 60 and 90 days. In this way, the merchant does not have to wait months to recover his capital or accept leonine discounts: he can choose to transfer one, two or all three separate installments on the market to cover immediate current expenses, such as salaries or stock replacement, at the most competitive rate possible.

This new instrument will operate digitally. For its implementation, the BCRA in coordination with the National Securities Commission (CNV) to provide liquidity to this new digital market.

The Government estimates that This new market could represent a total volume of around US$30 billion per month. That is why they believe that their “opening” will encourage competition with new players and will serve to lower discount rates.