Argentine bank MasVentas is now using Bitcoin for international payments

The Argentine bank Masventas reported that as of yesterday it allows customers to send cross-border payments using Bitcoin. Through a partnership with Bitex, an exchange company focused on Latin America, which was founded in 2014, allows the regional bank to use Bitcoin as a payment railway in international transactions as an alternative to Swift.

Bitex's head of marketing, Manuel Beaudroit, told CoinDesk that the startup believes this is the first time that a national bank adopts Bitcoin for cross-border payments.

Speaking, Jose Dakak, main shareholder of Masventas, reported that this decision is related to a broader push by the bank to improve its digital services based on smart phones, as well as to reduce the cost of the bank's service.

"One of the actions was to hire Bitex as a strategic partner in the implementation of the Bitex platform for payment and collection operations for our clients abroad," he said.

While no transactions have yet been launched in the real world (the service started yesterday), the bank will soon use Bitcoin for real customer transactions, said Beaudroit, who told CoinDesk:

"Customers will ask the bank to make an international payment and the bank uses Bitex as a provider, for the client, it is transparent, they do not touch, they do not see Bitcoin, we are a supplier for them, and they are not touching Bitcoin" .

MasVentas is a bank located in the provinces of Salta and Jujuy, in the north of the country. It is a small entity, although it has 50 years of operations. In his Twitter account, he does not refer to this new method of sending remittances. However, Bitex did write a tweet about this alliance.