How to launch dollar accounts in Latin America using stablecoins

It’s no secret that Latin Americans like having dollar access. Whether it's shops in Bolivia pricing goods in USDT or ARQ / DolarApp giving Mexicans dollar accounts to pay for Netflix, the use cases are more than just uno o dos. 

Launching a dollar account in Latin America used to be a multi-year project costing millions of dollars and fully reliant upon traditional bank partners. Today it can be a weeks-long integration thanks to modern stablecoin infrastructure. And the best part is that your customers do not have to know which rails you're using. Ni se enteran. 

With a stablecoin-powered solution, your users can open your app, see a balance in dollars, send some of it to a family member, and tap their card at a store in Mexico City or Miami. Nothing about that experience asks them to understand stablecoins, non-custodial wallets, or blockchains. All of that complexity stays entirely underneath a familiar and user-friendly front end. 

We spend most of our week in conversation with fintechs, neobanks, remittance companies, and marketplace platforms across Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, and beyond. As recently as two months ago, dollar accounts were talked about as a someday project. But now that the largest players in the region are actively rolling them out, these future ambitions have become immediate priorities. 

The good news is that launching a global account no longer requires rebuilding your entire stack. Rain’s expertise can help teams launch a full dollar account experience in weeks, or add only the pieces you need to what you've already built.

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Why your users actually want dollars

The reasons why Argentines or Colombians, for example, want dollars is not uniform. And we don’t mean that one is for yerba mate and the other is for arepas… In fact, we have seen multiple reasons for this growing demand for dollar accounts. They include:  

1. Holding dollars: Some users simply prefer to keep part of their balance in dollars, particularly when they expect to spend, send, or receive money in dollars.
2. Receiving money from abroad: Remittances, and increasingly freelance and contract income paid by clients in the US or Europe.
3. Paying for things priced in dollars: Cloud services, software and AI subscriptions, suppliers, and contractors.
4. Travel: Spending abroad with a local-currency card can mean high FX costs and unexpected declines.
5. Business operations: Small and mid-size businesses across the region increasingly invoice and pay in dollars.

Many times, users solve these problems through an informal exchange, with an account at a foreign fintech, or by holding stablecoins in a wallet that has nothing to do with your app. Every one of those workarounds, however, is money that has left your product.

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Dollar accounts used to be a two-year project

Integrating US dollar accounts into your platform historically meant finding a US sponsor bank willing to take on customers in your market. Then came the correspondent relationships, the account structure that holds customer funds, the minimum balances, and a compliance review that took several quarters to complete. 

If you then wanted to make that dollar balance spendable, the process began again. Card issuing was arranged market by market, with a separate partner, a separate contract, and a separate integration in each country. You were required to prefund settlement accounts in multiple markets with capital that sat idle for days and did nothing for your bottom line.

As a result, dollar accounts were only within reach for institutions large enough to absorb that cost, and the products they shipped were often narrow in who could open one and what they could do with it.

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The architecture of a stablecoin-powered dollar account

USD-backed stablecoins, like USDC or USDT, and accompanying infrastructure unlock dollar balances that can be securely stored and easily spent, without needing to build a banking relationship in another country or introduce friction into the user experience. 

The stablecoin plumbing that makes this all possible includes: 

• Onramps & virtual accounts: Turn local currency into USD-backed stablecoins. 
• Wallets: Store stablecoins securely within your app.
• Cards: A branded card backed by the stablecoin balance and accepted everywhere Visa or Mastercard are accepted. 
• Offramps: Turn stablecoins back into local currency.

For builders and fintech nerds looking for a deeper dive, check out our Anatomy of a Stablecoin Card Swipe.

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How to launch: start with the pieces you need

If you are starting from scratch, Rain provides the full suite of tooling needed to launch full-fledged dollar accounts in weeks.

However, almost nobody we talk to across Latin America is starting from zero, and we understand the reluctance to rebuild what may already exist. That’s why Rain has built its stablecoin payments infrastructure to be modular and interoperable with other technologies. Almost any team can add the pieces they need to give users dollar access, without replacing what already works.

If you already offer a USD balance, Rain can issue a card to make those funds spendable, which is usually the difference between dollar accounts that people just try and accounts they want to fund every single month. 

If you already have a card, Rain’s technology allows you to add the wallet, onramps, and offramps around it. Your product stops being a local-currency card and becomes a spending layer around a dollar balance, which changes what the product is worth to your user without changing the thing they already carry.

There is also a strong case to be made for upgrading an existing card program to a stablecoin card, for two reasons. The first is settlement. Traditional card programs settle over multiple days, which means you have to park capital in prefunded accounts. Rain settles card transactions with the networks daily using stablecoins, which reduces the amount of capital required to be parked for settlement. The second is reach. Traditional issuing is arranged country by country, so expansion means a new partner, a new integration, and a new operating model each time. Rain supports multi-region issuance through a single integration.

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Where this is heading

Dollar access in Latin America is moving from a premium feature to a baseline expectation. The companies that embrace stablecoin solutions will ship these offerings by next quarter, all while keeping the user experience familiar and trusted.

If you are working through what this looks like for your product, we’d love to arrange time to compare notes and outline a potential solution for you. Please reach out to us at sales@rain.xyz.