Prex, the digital wallet of Uruguayan origin that It already has 2 million users in Argentinajoined the competition to capture preference as a payment tool among Argentines traveling to Brazil.
The decision is framed in an exchange context that, temporarily, favors the exodus of Argentines to the Brazilian coasts due to the depreciation of the neighboring country’s currency in recent months, at the same time that in the local market the Argentine peso appreciated against the dollar.
“The service to pay in Brazil is now available. You can pay by reading a QR code or uploading an alias or payment key. And the amount is debited from the user’s account, whether in pesos or dollars. The application tells you the amount in reals and the quotes that apply depending on the currency used. The system is very widespread. There are people on the beach who begs for money and they have a pix code for cases when someone tells them that they don’t have money on them“, explained Daniel Conte, country manager of Prex Argentina, in dialogue with Scope.
“In this way, agility in payment times and security is achieved, the exposure of the physical card is reduced, avoiding cloning, and it is no longer necessary to carry cash or plastic,” he added.
This is the electronic means of payment most used in Brazil for transfers, even more than debit and credit cards, valid since the end of 2020. Among its main qualities is that it is available every day of the year, its transactions are instantaneous and are carried out in Brazilian reals.
Operations are generated through “Pix keys” which are transaction keys. These are registered with data such as the user’s telephone number, CPF number or email address or a random key. In this way, the user’s bank details are accessed and the transaction happens immediately.
The business of cross-border payments in the fintech universe
Does the decision to launch this service at this time respond to the situation of appreciated pesos and depreciated real pesos?asked Scope.
“In more than that. It is a decision closely linked to our history. The company was born in 2015 in Uruguay and was already born with the bimonetary option. We have always been linked to exchange operations, international payments and all kinds of solutions for tourists.. That is why in 2022 we launched the Prex pesos so that Uruguayans traveling to Argentina could pay with a card issued here as if they were Argentinians. And 70% of Uruguayans who traveled used it. It was a great goal,” explained Daniel Conte.
Regarding how much the general economic context of Argentina influenced, the Prex manager commented: “We started 2024 with the expectation of how everything in the country was going to change. and with this new world towards bimonetarism We began to walk in that direction, to get more out of the bimonetary account. Now we have the MEP dollar so that people can buy, we increase everything that is purchases abroad, We have remunerated balances in dollars at 2% annuallywhich is an attractive rate for this currency. This environment of bimonetarism and cross border is leading us to look for international payment solutions all the time.”
The economic environment in which virtual wallet competition occurs It changes all the time and conditions competition between fintech companies.. In the months of high inflation, the differential was almost exclusively due to the performance of interest-bearing accounts. Now that has been attenuated with the drop in inflation and interest rates. But the appreciation of the peso that makes international destinations like Brazil more attractiveis what now sets the rules of the game for the sector.
“The good part about fintech is that we can quickly adapt to changes in the macro context. With paid accounts, the big change that was made was that Today people understand that their zero percent money is of no use to them.. It’s true that the rates are low, but people prefer 30% to nothing. It is good that it is understood that dead money contributes nothing. This also helped more users to take advantage of a whole range of products that greatly solve their day-to-day finances,” Conte highlighted.
What happened to the rate war between digital wallets
Regarding the rate as a differential between wallets, the Prex country manager explained: “At the time there was a rate war, the one who paid the highest rate or the best fund manager was the one who got everything. Now we are more stable, even when we see that a competitor may have a better rate than us, we do not worry, because the clients who are paying with us stay with us. Now that the trend is that they are going to Brazil, we add Pix so that they can continue increasing the usability experience of our application”.
Prex was founded in Uruguay in 2015 and then expanded its presence to Argentina (2019), Peru (2021) and Chile (2024). The next objective is to settle in Paraguay, according to Conte.
“In Argentina we are close to reaching 2 million users. We grew a lot through word of mouth. And there is still a very large margin to continue growing. But we want to grow organically and prudently, actively but sustainably.. The idea is not to run a campaign and pay people money to get 10 million customers, spend a fortune and in three months the company is bankrupt,” Conte explained about Prex’s expansion strategy.
The wallet moved its base from Montevideo to Buenos Aires, from where it serves all the countries where it is present. “Here we have 450 people working out of a total of 500 throughout the company. “In Uruguay we are the most used wallet, with 1.3 million users out of an economically active population of 1.7 million people,” he concluded.
Source: Ambito
