Dollar: foreign tourists will be able to pay with virtual wallets at the MEP exchange rate

He Central Bank (BCRA) provided, within the framework of its usual board meeting on Thursdays, that “the consumption of foreign tourists made through electronic wallets that imply a debit in their bank or virtual accounts may also be settled at an exchange rate that has financial dollars as a reference. In this way, what he did was extend the dollar card for foreigners, which allowed banks to apply the price of the MEP dollar to foreigners. international credit card payments in the country, to electronic tools.

Thus, according to a statement from the BCRA in which the new measure was reported, this rule, which will come into force as of this Friday, “equals the payment with QR from foreign wallets to those made with debit and credit cards”.

This implies that the administrator of a wallet, if interested in offering this to its users, has to sign an agreement with local operators, such as MODO and Mercado Pago, to do so. In fact, as revealed by a market source to Ambit“there would be advanced conversations with PIX, from Brazil, to advance in that sense with Modo”.

So far, and taking this new decision into account, the following service operations benefit from this same measure:

• The consumption charges made by non-residents through debit, credit, purchase or prepaid cards issued abroad.

• The charges for any type of tourist service in the country hired by non-residents, including those hired through wholesale and/or retail travel and tourism agencies in the country.

• The non-resident passenger transportation service charges to the country by land.

A key detail of this measure is that all those dollars that enter for tourist payments with these digital instruments they will go to the MEP market. And, as Gustavo Quintana, from PR Operadores de Cambio, points out, “everything that stimulates the inflow of foreign currency can help improve the dynamics of financial dollars.”

One measure with three purposes

Thus, with this step, the monetary regulator aims, on the one hand, to discourage the attendance of foreign tourists to the blue dollar market and to inject liquidity into the financial dollar, as another way of continuing to control that market, and, at the same time, advances in its intention to promote the use of digital payment tools.

This is key at a time when many foreigners from neighboring countries they are coming to buy from Argentina taking advantage of the differences with the exchange rate after the recent skyrocketing of the blue dollar. That is why this is a very opportune moment to move forward in this regard.

However, Quintana points out that “you have to see the fine print and the detailed procedure to see how this measure is channeled and if its implementation is easy and friendly“, although he considers that, in a first approximation, it may be positive for the exchange dynamics.

In the same sense, the financial analyst, Andrés Reschini, believes that “are measures that go in the right direction and can helpAlthough, it is clearly not a solution to Argentina’s problems”.

However, on the other hand, there are those who warn that this measure will take away supply from the blue dollar market, so it could rise a bit, as happened initially with the implementation of the exchange rate at the value of the dollar. MEP dollar for expenses with international cards by foreigners, which led to an initial upward trend, which later stabilized when the market assimilated this condition as a natural element of its operation.