Third Annual Risk Conference 2025
What it is about
Juan Ernesto Curutchet, superintendent of Financial and Foreign Exchange Institutions at the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic, explained at the Third Annual Risk Conference (September 2025) how Argentina regulates and supervises fintechs, in particular payment service providers that offer payment accounts.
The 41 slides describe the Argentine fintech universe, the regulatory scheme for payment service providers (reserve requirements, information requirements, anti-fraud rules), customer onboarding risks, regulatory and supervisory challenges, the registry of virtual asset providers and a broad section of statistical data on accounts, balances, instant transfers and QR payments.
Objectives
- Explain how Argentina has regulated payment service providers that offer payment accounts.
- Identify the risks the supervisor sees, such as onboarding of high-risk users and systemic importance.
- Show with data the size of fintechs in payments and financial inclusion.
Key takeaways
- Three factors characterize the new dynamic: the accelerated expansion of payment service providers, the exponential use of technology tools and the rise in cybersecurity incidents.
- Balances in payment accounts equal about 20% of demand deposit balances in the Argentine financial system, and 12 providers account for 94.5% of the amounts transferred (June 2025).
- Payment accounts have been governed since 2020 by a framework with a 100% reserve requirement of funds at banks, the obligation to offer a uniform virtual key (CVU) and fraud mitigation rules.
- The supervisor pays attention to systemic importance, the business model and the risk of onboarding unwanted users or entities for lack of identity verification.
- The regulatory challenge is to have a flexible and balanced framework that gives the system strength and promotes innovation; virtual asset providers must register since March 2024.
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