Tether USDT to become available at 24,000 ATMs across Brazil

Stablecoin issuer Tether will make USDT available at 24,000 ATMs in Brazil starting Nov. 3. The mutual conversion of Tether and Brazilian reals will be managed by the local crypto services provider SmartPay and the ATMs’ owner TecBan.

On Oct. 20, Tether announced it will enable the conversion of USDT to Brazilian reals through an agreement with local crypto services provider SmartPay, which is integrated with TecBan, a Brazilian company that owns 24,000 ATMs.

SmartPay CEO Rocelo Lopes told CoinDesk that users would be able to send USDT from their crypto wallets to an ATM. The company will also allow users to deposit Brazilian reals at ATMs and receive USDT in their wallets starting in February.

“Adding tether tokens to ATMs across Brazil provides the opportunity to include more people in the financial system,” Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino said. “This will bring major changes not only to the payments industry but to the entire Brazilian financial ecosystem.”

Lately, the adoption of stablecoins has been rapidly rising. USDT is the 3rd largest cryptocurrency according to market cap. USDT, USDC, and BUSD, the top three stablecoins combined, have a market cap of more than $134 Billion.

The wide use of stablecoins is to give remittances as they are more convenient for cross-border payment than traditional finance. In Brazil, more than $1.4 billion was moved using USDT across 79,836 operations in August, with an average amount of almost $18,000 per transaction. Remittance payments are the key factor in the rise of crypto adoption by 40% in Latin America.

This May, Tether launched its MXNT token pegged to Mexico’s peso as a “testing ground” in Latin America, the firm said at that time, adding that the initiative was intended to “pave the way” for more fiat-pegged tokens in the region.