ARGENTINA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Maria Victoria Funes, Luciano Zanutto, Camila G. Lima and Tomas Celerier, Bomchil
Electronic payments for public transportation In November 2024, the BCRA authorised finan - cial institutions and PSPs to participate in the payment chain with electronic funds transfers initiated with QR codes for public transportation to the extent they comply with certain regula - tions. Although the prior payment system is not yet available, public transportation users in the City of Buenos Aires have the possibility of paying for tickets with credit, debit or prepaid cards. The first data collected in December 2024 showed that 20% of tickets during this month were paid through one of those payment methods. National Payment System In December 2024, the BCRA introduced chang - es to the National Payment System to incentiv - ise the use of prepaid cards among consumers following the growth of this payment method – 97.3% in November 2024 compared with November 2023 according to the BCRA’s Retail Payments Report. These changes implied the reduction of the accreditation periods to mer - chants from around 18 business days to two business days. In January 2025, the BCRA established that from April 2025 cardholders will be able to make debit card payments, both in pesos and in dol - lars, through QR code scanning, stipulating that interoperable digital wallets must enable these payments; however, it will be optional for mer - chants to accept dollar payments. Also, it was determined that regulations regarding liability for fraud and commission limits on transac - tions applicable to credit card payments will be extended to debit card payments.
Scheduled DEBIN From 28 February 2025, users will be able to pay for the acquisitions of goods and servic - es through Scheduled DEBIN and, according to this newly introduced variant of Recurring DEBIN, those acquisitions will be paid in fixed installments, in pesos or dollars, debited from the users’ account, requiring prior authorisation, which will be granted only once upon subscrib - ing to this instant transfer mechanism. Open Finance The concept of open finance evolved from open banking, which refers to the creation of regu - latory frameworks that facilitate data sharing between banking institutions and the payment system. This initiative was expanded to include all entities within the financial system, aiming to incorporate non-financial entities and extend its scope to other financial products – such as loans from non-financial credit providers, mortgages, credit cards, investment funds, and insurance, among others. According to a survey by Finnovista, there is notable collaboration arising between fintechs and financial entities, with 53.4% of banks already collaborating, 22.4% open to it and 21.3% looking to collaborate, or in the process of collaborating, with fintechs, driven by the understanding that fintechs can serve as agile distributors of financial products in areas where they have less presence. Embedded finance and open finance involve the secure exchange of banking data between finan - cial institutions and interoperability via applica - tion programming interfaces (APIs). This free flow of information theoretically allows better services to be provided to users as it allows each financial service provider already contractually linked to a user to act as a trusted third party
34
CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook