Overview
- Coelsa, which announced the feature Thursday, said it is negotiating with the five largest banks to develop an NFC option for instant transfers.
- The system uses near-field communication so two phones can complete a transfer by being held close together without an alias, bank ID code, or QR code.
- Coelsa says it will run on existing payment rails used by banks and wallets and will add a tag to flag NFC-initiated transactions so processing stays the same for participants.
- Immediate transfers in Argentina top 650 million operations a month and move about 75 trillion pesos, with more than three in four involving a virtual wallet and QR accounting for nearly all such transactions.
- If adopted at scale, Argentina would be the first country in Latin America with direct phone-to-phone transfers, a shift that could challenge QR leaders as contactless use grows in transport after the SUBE network opened to tap payments.