The financial arm of Mercado Livre, Mercado Pago, announced this Thursday the launch of the functionality for buying and selling cryptocurrencies through its application, at a time when digital currencies are rapidly gaining popularity in Brazil.
In partnership with the custody and blockchain platform Paxos, paid market users will be able to trade bitcoin, the best known among cryptoactives, in addition to Ethereum and stablecoin USDP, with operations starting at 1 reais, the company said. Transactions with other digital currencies are to be included later, but there is no target date yet.
The announcement reinforces the move of the largest e-commerce portal in Latin America towards digital assets, after announcing in May that it bought 7.8 million dollars in bitcoin, “as part of its treasury strategy”.
According to the vice president of Mercado Pago in Brazil, Tulio Oliveira, the company’s approximately 20 million users are expected to be able to buy virtual coins through the application in the coming weeks. Transactions will cost 2% on conversions.
This Wednesday’s announcement had already been partially anticipated by the chief executive of Mercado Livre, Marcos Galperin, who said last week on Twitter that the company would launch a modality of purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies in Brazil.
Immediately, the balance of cryptocurrencies in Mercado Pago cannot be used to pay for purchases in Mercado Livre, but the president of Fintech at the group, Osvaldo Gimenez, said that this option could be made available in the future.
Reference: CNN Brasil
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