At the moment, the two major players fully integrated with Stellar in Argentina are Settle (used by Vibrant) and Anclap.

https://stellar.expert/explorer/public/asset/ARST-GCSAZVWXZKWS4XS223M5F54H2B6XPIIXZZGP7KEAIU6YSL5HDRGCI3DG: Supply: ARST 237M

https://stellar.expert/explorer/public/asset/ARS-GCYE7C77EB5AWAA25R5XMWNI2EDOKTTFTTPZKM2SR5DI4B4WFD52DARS-1: Supply 24M

Keeping a steady supply of digital ARS is difficult. Even with the new policies Argentina has been implementing which kept the ARS at USD 1:ARS 1000 for nearly four months, recently the ARS has again devalued from USD 1:1000 to USD 1:1300 (30% depreciation) almost overnight. See: https://cuex.com/en/usd-ars_pa

At SGF (SGF Solutions SRL), we have 12 years of providing financial solutions to Argentinians, and through our well-established network of retail and corporate clients, we are able to provide double the liquidity in ARS and USD than the other two providers combined, monthly; our relevant monthly volumes are ~ARS 600M (7.2bn/yr) in bank transfers (payouts) which are exchanged from ~USD 500,000/month (6M/yr) and smaller volumes of crypto (BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT) totalling ~USD 100,000.

Our operating fees, while dynamic, are generally between 0% and 1%. We believe this is a good fit for the Stellar network, which prides itself on providing low fees for financial transactions.

While not relevant to this application, we also provide remittances from Argentina to Spain, which has seen a significant uptake in the last few years as the emigration rates increased due to Argentina’s poor economic conditions.

It’s important to clarify that we are not looking to issue our own ARS asset, but rather to improve the interoperability of the Stellar blockchain by accepting Stellar’s USDC and off-ramping ARS directly to bank accounts and digital wallets (CBU’s and CVU’s such as MercadoPago, see https://www.bcra.gob.ar/MediosPago/Politica_Pagos-i.asp).

SGF proposes building an application that leverages the Stellar Anchor Platform and SEP-24 to accept USDC and offramp ARS. This is supported in SEP-24 as per this pull request https://github.com/stellar/stellar-protocol/pull/1064, and we quote: “This protocol was originally designed to provide conversions between off-chain and on-chain equivalent assets – for instance BRL <> BRLT, USD <> USDC, NGN <> NGNT, etc. – but it has been updated to make exchanges between off-chain and on-chain non-equivalent assets like BRL <> USDC.“ Our use case is USDC <> ARS (one-way, to begin with).

Please see the concrete steps to achieve this in our technical architecture document and make sure to read our total expected roadmap in the relevant section of this document.

If you have any questions, please reach out to us @ martin_sgf on Discord

Yes, we do. SGF will make ~600M ARS of liquidity available per month to the Stellar Ecosystem, and we will actively promote the convenience of Stellar’s USDC over other chains as it will be the only one that’s automated for us.

We believe these next three deliverables will set us up for success and ensure we don’t require ongoing funding from the SCF (on this note, SGF is already profitable).

Conversion from any currency: Making use of Payment Paths, the hosted withdrawal can always convert any asset into USDC first to send ARS to the recipient. This is a small improvement on top of the MVP we will deliver in 1.5 months.

B2B integration: We will work to develop a seamless B2B offering for companies looking to tap into the Argentinian market. This is our next big development and will likely take us 3-4 months to build.

Mass payouts. We would like to work on an SDP-compatible wallet or add-on where disbursements reach real bank accounts in fiat (ARS only) automatically, instead of virtual ones where the off ramping still needs to happen manually on each wallet.

[Deliverable 1]

Install Anchor Platform

How to measure completion: Verify the endpoints in our SEP-001 TOML file are working.

Estimated date of completion: 2 weeks from grant date

Budget: USD 5,500 (includes costs for running the anchor platform for 1 year)

[Deliverable 2]

User Portal: Allow users to register and upload files for KYC (we already have a solution in place)

How to measure completion: Visit https://www.sgfsolutions.io/ and register.

Estimated date of completion: 4 weeks from grant date

Budget: USD 12,500

[Deliverable 3]

Hosted withdrawal: Allow users to connect their wallet using Simple Signer, provide them with an account to send their USDC (GA432BKO4RXZT6HXA4TAJTWFTY35MRI4CTWCDOY4A6EMHGQUSBZ7WSGF) and have them complete their preferred bank account. Manually approve the withdrawal of funds and transfer the money to their ARS bank account.

Estimated date of completion: 6 to 8 weeks from grant date

Budget: 12,500

These three deliverables will make SGF Solutions ready to operate in the Stellar public network, providing immediate value to the ecosystem.

Martin Tenaglia has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and information systems. Martin has been operating SGF for the past decade (~12 years), serving thousands of customers in Argentina and Spain. SGF currently has ten full-time employees working in partnership with six larger organizations in the Argentinian and European markets.

SGF is working closely with the Planet Pay team to deliver this feature, and we will be using their team for development. Planet Pay will be the first customer of the automated solution for retail customers.