Mercado Libre’s financial arm, Mercado Pago, will enable cryptocurrency transactions in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The financial arm of Mercado Libre, Mercado Pago, announced on Thursday (2) the launch of buying and selling cryptocurrencies through its application at a time when digital currencies are gaining rapid popularity in Brazil.

In partnership with the custody and blockchain platform Paxos, the company’s users will be able to trade bitcoin, the best known among cryptocurrencies, ethereum, and the Stablecoin USDP, with operations starting at R$1, the company said.

Operations with other digital currencies should be included later, but there is no expected date yet.

The announcement reinforces the move by Latin America’s largest e-commerce portal toward digital assets after it announced in May that it bought US$7.8 million (almost R$44 million) in Bitcoin “as part of its treasury strategy”.

According to the vice president of Mercado Pago in Brazil, Tulio Oliveira, the expectation is that the company’s approximately 20 million users will be able to buy virtual currencies through the app in the coming weeks. The transactions will have a 2% cost in conversions.

The announcement of this Thursday had already been anticipated in part by the CEO of Mercado Libre himself, Marcos Galperin. He said last week on Twitter that the company would launch a mode of buying and selling cryptocurrencies in Brazil.

For now, the balance of cryptocurrencies in Mercado Pago cannot be used to pay for purchases in Mercado Livre. Still, the president of Fintech in the group, Osvaldo Gimenez, said that this option might be available in the future.