Case Study
Vibrant's Impact in Argentina
Industry
Fintech
Country/Region
Argentina, United States
Use cases
Stellar for PaymentsCross-border Payments
Stellar USDC
About
This is Vibrant
Vibrant is a wallet app developed on the Stellar network by a team at Sunship, Inc., a subsidiary of the Stellar Development Foundation. By employing Stellar, Vibrant makes it possible for Argentines experiencing inflation to purchase and hold USDC quickly, cheaply, and easily.
Challenge
Hit by Inflation
Argentina is one of the Latin American countries hit hardest by ever-increasing inflation. With an average annual inflation rate of 24% over the past 20 years in Argentina, the depreciation of the peso ranks as the most relevant issue for Argentines.
To protect themselves from devaluation, Argentines typically preserve their wealth by exchanging the Argentine peso for the US dollar. This process usually involves opening foreign bank accounts and holding onto the physical bills at home. This leaves them with no safe way to store or use their money.
Stablecoins have been growing in popularity in Argentina, but accessing stablecoins through exchanges often leaves customers with a confusing and cumbersome user experience.
Solution
Protected From Devaluation
Vibrant saw an opportunity to give Argentines an alternative means of protecting themselves from devaluation. As a wallet app built on the Stellar network, Vibrant is designed to expand access to dollar-based stablecoins such as USDC, a fully-reserved digital dollar stablecoin backed by cash, repo, and short-dated US Treasuries.
Access to New Markets and Products
- By integrating with different partners such as Settle and Circle, Vibrant enables its users to easily access on/off ramps, allowing their value to move effortlessly between regular fiat and digital currencies. By integrating with anchors on Stellar, Vibrant can easily expand into new markets via their on and off-ramps.
- Since the Stellar network is ideal for issuing assets representing any type of value (e.g. fiat, securities, crypto), Vibrant can easily provide its user with access to new financial products based on what assets are available in the Stellar ecosystem.
Speed
- In Argentina, the value of the peso can decrease in a matter of days. When someone has to wait days for a financial institution to exchange their pesos into physical US dollars (often in large denominations) and back again, the settlement time already threatens to devalue the final amount the user ends up receiving.
- Transactions on the Stellar network clear and settle in a matter of seconds. With Vibrant, users are able to exchange ARST into USDC and back at a moment’s notice. They can then withdraw ARST to their bank account into pesos – a process that takes one business day to complete.
Low Fees
- Transaction fees on the Stellar network are so low – less than a fraction of a cent – that Vibrant can sponsor them upfront on behalf of its users. On Vibrant, users don’t have to pay transaction fees in order to deposit, withdraw, or exchange their money.
Simple User Experience
- Thanks to its suite of tools, standards for KYC compliance, and API capabilities, the Stellar network allows businesses to build products and services focusing on the user experience. People using Vibrant can transact quickly and easily, taking advantage of Settle’s on/off ramp to exchange their value all the way from fiat to ARST to USDC and back effortlessly.
- Each USDC is backed by one dollar or asset with equivalent fair value, which is held in accounts with US regulated financial institutions.
- Vibrant users are able to hold USDC tokens without having to worry about devaluation without limits or restrictions impacting their value.
The Stellar network supports people's access to assets and financial services they wouldn't otherwise have access to.
Kyle McCollom, Director of Product
Developer Documentation
Dive into the docs
Issuing assets is a core feature of the Stellar network: any asset can be tokenized (or minted) on the network and then tracked, held, and traded quickly and cheaply. Explore our developer documentation to discover how.
Issuing an asset on the Stellar network is easy and only takes a few operations. However, there are additional considerations you may need to think about depending on your use case, such as publishing asset information, compliance, and asset supply, which we’ll cover in this documentation.
Results
Impact
Today, Argentines have an easy and accessible way to protect themselves from devaluation of the peso. With just a mobile phone and a bank account, Argentines receive the anti-inflationary benefits of US dollars by holding USDC.
The Vibrant team focused on building a positive user experience for those looking for a safeguard of value, as well as developing features fintech companies would like to implement when building their own products on the Stellar network. On top of the wallet, the team plans on building more features that help Argentine users not just preserve their wealth, but grow it.
In addition to expanding product features, Vibrant plans to offer their services in different markets as well. Due to more on and off-ramps and anchors becoming available on the Stellar network, Vibrant can now integrate with more anchors and expand into countries such as Mexico.
Connect
Want to know more?
Contact us today to learn how your business can use Stellar to enable frictionless cross-border payment services and how the Stellar Development Foundation can help.
Next Steps