Lemon, an Argentine fintech that offers the possibility of trading cryptocurrencies and using them from its application, has received 16.3 million dollars from national and foreign investors to finalize its development plan. They plan to launch a Visa card to be able to pay with cryptocurrencies and take their platform to other Latin American countries.
According to their directors told the Argentine portal Infobae, the developer of the Lemon Cash app (today on IOS and Android) now seeks to combine this virtual wallet with a Visa debit card. In this way, its users will have the possibility to transform their balance into cryptocurrencies in the application and then spend it on any business that accepts these cards, whose presence is very important both in Argentina and in other countries. In merchants that accept bitcoin (BTC) or other cryptocurrencies, paying with them will also be an option.
As an additional benefit, on the Lemon website it is detailed that the Customers receive refunds in cryptocurrencies every time they use their card, which has no maintenance cost. So far there are already 60,000 users on the waiting list to get their plastic from the multinational firm, accepted in millions of businesses around the world.
In addition, another of the plans in the short term for the company founded and led by Borja Martel and Marcelo Cavazzoli, is to take its operations to Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Chile and Colombia. For the long term, the idea is to also arrive to Brazil and Mexico, the two great Latin American markets. In this sense, the first thing the company will do is to form a team of professionals to work with these objectives in mind. The idea is to double the staff of experts, which today has 35 people.
Founded in 2019, Lemon received capital from very important companies in the fintech world. For example, some of those that contributed to the growth of the startup Argentina were Kingsway Capital, Draper Associates, Valor Capital, Cadenza Ventures, Draper Cygnus, Coinbase Ventures and Draper University Ventures. Likewise, a bank, Supervielle, and Andrés Bilbao, one of the founders of the Colombian platform Rappi, participated.
In dialogue with the aforementioned media, Cavazzoli stated that his focus «will always be on uniting the two ecosystems, expanding our offer of solutions and products and always thinking about real usability ». “The distrust of a part of the market about cryptocurrencies occurs because it is not something tangible. The strategy is to attract the customer to enter the crypto world with tools they are used to, such as a digital wallet, “he added.
Cryptocurrencies are well accepted in Argentina
Another of the ideas expressed by Cavazzoli has to do with “the luck of being Argentine”, in the vision of the owners of the firm. It is that they highlight the good reputation that cryptocurrencies have in the country, added to the fact that the changing situation in terms of the economy “forces to get used to changes.”
In this sense, Everything seems to indicate that there will be important developments in the future, and not only in terms of innovation and technology, but also in legislation. As CriptoNoticias reported, there is already in the Chamber of Deputies of the Nation a bill that will allow the collection of salaries in bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies. Even, according to its author, President Alberto Fernández himself will support the debate so that this issue is discussed in the Lower House.
