Brazilian Fintech PicPay to Launch Crypto Exchange, Real-Tied Stablecoin

This article is adapted from CoinDesk Brasil, a partnership between CoinDesk and InfoMoney, one of Brazil's leading financial news publications. Follow CoinDesk Brasil on Twitter.

PicPay, a Brazil-based digital payments app, plans to launch a crypto exchange and a Brazilian real-tied stablecoin in 2022, the company announced Monday.

The exchange will provide access to bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and Paxos’ USDP stablecoin, the company said in a statement, adding that the development of its stablecoin will allow users to pay, transfer and store that cryptocurrency as early as 2022.

“PicPay will enter the crypto market to lead its popularization not only as an investment, but also as a way to decentralize payments and other financial services,” Anderson Chamon, vice president of technology and products at PicPay, said in a statement.

The company was founded in 2012 as a digital wallet, but later mutated into a payments app offering a financial marketplace, among other services. The platform has more than 65 million users, of which 30 million are active.

PicPay has also created a dedicated crypto business unit, Chamon said, adding that it plans to hire new crypto and Web3 talent to join that team.

According to PicPay, the retail crypto market “is already very large in Brazil,” evidenced by the fact that investors double the number of stock investors, the company said based on a survey conducted by local media outlet G1.

The company added that despite the drop in the crypto market, its technological proposition is still the same. “We believe that cryptocurrencies will grow again as new ways of using them appear and become commonplace,” it said.

The entrance of PicPay into the crypto market accompanies that of other major fintech players in Brazil.

In May, Nubank, the largest Brazilian digital bank by market value, added the option for customers to buy and sell bitcoin and ether on its platform, while in December, Mercado Libre, Latin America’s largest e-commerce company by market value, allowed users in Brazil to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies

This article was translated by Andrés Engler and edited by CoinDesk. The original Portuguese can be found here.