Latin American cryptocurrency exchange Bitso announced it has officially launched its app in Colombia, which will allow residents to begin loading their pesos into their wallets.
With over 4 million users spread across Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, the exchange is now targeting over 1 million active users in the Latin American country.
In February, the company first announced its expansion into Colombia, working actively on its pilot program with cash in and cash-out operations with Banco de Bogota.
Through the Latin America’s popular online payment system PSE, Colombian users will be able to purchase assets including Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, ApeCoin, and U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins such as Dai, Tether, and TrueUSD. This will allow users to pay from their bank accounts without using any credit or debit cards.
Bitso: Latin America’s biggest unicorns
Valued at $1 billion, Bitso is reportedly worth around $2.2 billion after a $250 million funding round last year. Colombia is Bitso’s fourth market and considered one of the “unicorns” in today’s decentralized industry, according to Reuters.
Founded in April 2014, the exchange was the first Latin American firm and one of the first crypto platforms to be regulated by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission’s Distributed Ledger Technology Framework. As one of the biggest crypto unicorns in Latam, Bitso has continued its expansion after introducing new yield services for customers, now available to all Bitso users through Bitso+.
“With our launch in Colombia we hope to hit 5 million customers and we think we can do that this month,” Bitso co-founder and CEO Daniel Vogel told Reuters in a call.
“We see Colombia as a key market for us, which we are entering with this expansion plan from the point of view of our products, hiring people (and) growing in the country – it is a very dynamic market in terms of cryptocurrencies,” he added.
However, the CEO did not disclose the amount of the investment in Colombia, while known venture capitalists including “Cometa, Pantera, Coinbase Ventures, QED Investors, Kaszek, Tiger Global, Coatue, and Bond” have funded the move.
Vogel also added that the company is not looking to raise more money at the moment and is focused on growing the business.
The rise of Columbia
The South American country is ranked fourth for peer-to-peer (P2P) BTC trading volume, according to Triple A. Per the estimation, around 6.1 percent of Colombians own digital assets that account for roughly 3.1 million people.
“80% of Colombians showed willingness to invest in cryptocurrencies while more than half of Colombians aged 25 to 40 have already invested or expressed interest in buying cryptocurrencies. A third of Colombian crypto-owners had already carried out transactions using cryptocurrencies,” the report reads.
Yet, this is not Bitso’s first operation in Colombia, as the crypto exchange previously helped one of the country’s most used food delivery apps – Rappi, to launch a crypto payments pilot program.
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