The Argentine buying and selling company Mercado Libre announced this Thursday (31.5.2018) the incorporation of a new feature to its platform that will allow, from now on, making payments in physical establishments in the country using only a mobile phone, through the scanning of a QR code.
This was stated by its executive director, Marcos Galperin, in a meeting with the press, who presented this technological measure as a "comprehensive solution" for the 50% of the population of Latin America that currently does not have access to a bank account and cannot make digital payments, he said.
"We think that in a few years the use of cash will be something absolutely anachronistic; We will see less and less use of cash And we are really going to have to explain to our children that one had to carry a wad of money to pay for their purchases," Galperin said in his speech.
Requirement
In order to pay by QR code it is necessary to have a credit or debit card or by depositing cash into the "digital wallet"tto the" from Mercado Libre - managed through the Mercado Pago platform, similar to the global PayPal - a solution that, they say, benefits the "excluded" part of society.
"It's an alternative; you don't need to open a bank account to do it; if you have cash that you want to use in Mercado Pago, in Argentina there are tens of thousands of branches where you can fund your Mercado Pago account with cash and from then on make electronic payments," explained the firm's executive vice president, Osvaldo Giménez.
Advantage
According to data presented by the company, more than 40 million users make use of a smartphone, so the premise of this technology is the ability to ""go with your phone, without having your wallet on you" and "be able to make payments everywhere"".
Mercado Libre has introduced this mode of operation in Argentina after NFC (Near Field Communication) technology began to be implemented in 2017, which enables the exchange of data between devices and also a form of wireless payment.
Initiative in Argentina
Despite the company's current regional reach - more than 100.000 employees in eight countries - For the moment, the initiative has only been implemented in Argentina., where the firm has already distributed 160.000 QR codes to SMEs, establishments and Mercado Libre users that sell products.
According to Galperin, a large part of the population "is today excluded by income, by their savings and by buying and paying in installments from creating a financial history," whereas, once they become accustomed to this method of payment, it will be easier to "integrate" them into the financial market.
"When people who were forced to use cash because there was no other way to pay start leaving digital footprints (…) we will be able to start giving information about them that was previously impossible to give," said the company's CEO, referring to the creation of a new "financial history" that does not go through a bank.
Source: Reuters
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