Uruguay expands its network of crypto ATMs after a promising start

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The company confirmed that the results were better than expected: the machine exceeded 10,000 transactions in a month. A month after the opening of the first ATM, inaugurated on January 7, the company announced that three new ATMs will be installed in Montevideo and in the cities of Colonia and Chuy in March.

InBierto launched a cryptocurrency ATM in Uruguay earlier this year, in the city of Punta del Este.

Chuy has a land border with Brazil, while Colonia and Montevideo both have ports that are frequently used for entry from Argentina.

The ATM network is called U-Teller, and these ATMs were manufactured in Uruguay by the companies InBierto and Urubit.

Currently, the machines only allow the purchase of Uruguayan cryptocurrencies Ferret Token and Urubit, as well as Bitcoin, BNB, and BUSD, which can be purchased with Visa and MasterCard cards.

U-Teller says it plans to expand in the region, as there has been interest from other Latin American countries with as many as 120 requests to install the technology. The company stresses that it is already in talks with interested parties to coordinate the installation of its services in neighboring countries.

“The ATM was used so much per day that we had to upgrade the hardware because it had temperature problems. We learned so much from this first experience that today we are preparing the second version of the software, which is much faster, more flexible, and has a higher capacity than we initially planned,” explains Adolfo Varela, founder of InBierto.

EXPANDING EXISTING ATM NETWORK IN URUGUAY

According to the company’s CEO, the goal is to “increase the acceptance of this type of technology and allow more people to get to know it: to have the experience of exchanging their cryptocurrency for money and vice versa.”

In parallel, the company is betting that cryptocurrencies will become a viable payment option for Uruguayan businesses. “There is a lot of potential for growth. More coins are being created every day and the market is growing with more people using them, more uses for the different types of cryptocurrencies or blockchains, and an infinite number of everyday uses that are now being adapted to the blockchain, which will lead to significant growth,” Varela explained.

The adoption of cryptocurrencies is also growing in other countries.

In Argentina, for example, there are currently 12 terminals in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Córdoba and Mendoza. Many of these ATMs are multi-coin machines that can process Bitcoin as well as Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC).

The first one was installed at the Walmart supermarket in Villa Pueyrredón on Avenida Constituyentes. Most of these ATMs are operated by North American Athena, which landed in Argentina in 2018.

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