I'm a Canadian that has migrated to Brazil after many years of experience with the people and the country. When I moved I was already building a cross-border payment product using stablecoins, the Stripe for the immigration industry. But I discovered that there was a new instant payment method that had been introduced by the Central Bank, Pix, that was growing quickly and being adopted by most consumers and businesses for all types of payments. However, non-resident visitors to the country are blocked from using it and this is creating more difficulties for nomads to pay for their travel expenses. I decided this was a more interesting product to build in the moment and got to work with some engineers. After some time I learned that this problem exists in other countries and more will be adopting similar systems in the coming years, including others in LatAm. So what was a product to connect visitors to Brazil to the Pix system grew into becoming like a global Venmo (but also for retail sales). I already did the research in Argentina about Mergado Pago / Modo, and that's the first expansion market. Initiatives such as "Accept USDC" are growing in the US, but not yet in LatAm, whereas Emigro is a great way to get a broad distribution of people spending at retail stores using USDC and EURC, foreign visitors that would have otherwise used cash. There's a market of 10's of millions of digital nomads to choose from that can become ambassadors to spread acceptance of USDC and EURC on Base in LatAm and beyond. My original immigration industry product is a good expansion use-case once there is broad acceptance by the nomads, bringing Base to the legal / overseas workers / overseas education / travel industries.

Instant, card-less retail payments using QR code technology are quickly rising in popularity and several countries are introducing these systems for their citizens. However, travelers to these countries are generally blocked from using these local payment systems and it's becoming a problem as more people, such as digital nomads, are spending more time traveling internationally. These digital nomads are tech-savvy and would prefer not to exchange and carry cash. Credit card acceptance isn't universal, whereas Emigro can be used to receive payment by anyone with a smartphone and a bank account in the countries we operate. Emigro will be the single wallet that nomads can travel with, especially in the trifecta of LatAm, the EU and SE Asia. Other similar wallets are focused on peer-to-peer, which every wallet should be able to do, whereas Emigro is going the extra step of enabling commerce in ways that travelers would not have been able to do before.

There are two big differentiators, on-chain foreign exchange and enabling access to local payment methods, rather than introducing a new payment method locally. We're using fiat-pegged stablecoins in the countries we operate, and are doing the currency swaps on-chain that are always available, instant and low-cost. Enabling access to local payment methods means we would allow foreigners in Brazil to pay with Pix, and Brazilians in the US to pay with Venmo, for example. We have bank-as-a-service partners that enable Emigro to offer the local payment methods to the nomads and other travelers that encounter these payment challenges and high cost alternatives. Later, a credit card can be offered, to spend directly from the wallet enabling larger purchases and dealing with the refunds and purchase protection that need to be in place, to offer a fully digital stablecoin solution for travelers.

The main challenge is finding that partners that can enable the local payment methods in the way that Emigro needs for its customers, and that will work with digital currency companies. It takes a long time to meet with the potential partners, discuss the model, get acceptance, go through a background check process, and then do the testing to be able to see if they can actually do what they say they can. We now have a partner that can take us to all the major LatAm markets after they developed custom APIs speficially for us.