[civilized]

It looks like you basically combined FDIC-insured bank accounts with Venmo-like payment functionality and some other stuff? That seems pretty useful.

But currently Latinos mostly use Whatsapp for payments? Is that right?

[Piero0909]

In part yes. We've also implemented free remittances up to $300 making it 10x better and cheaper to send money for 90% of use cases. Thanks!

[toomuchtodo]

Kudos to the free remittance feature, genuine social good there. Wishing y’all success!

[atlasunshrugged]

That's really interesting, how do you manage the conversion for the person accepting the funds abroad? Generally you have to tap into a partner network you build right? Or are you partnering up with some existing provider to use their infrastructure?

[Piero0909]

Thanks! The person getting the funds can receive them in their bank account or pick it up at specific locations. They can either have a Pana profile (chat only) or not. We do have great partners including some on the infrastructure side

[aaaaaaaaata]

Are you avoiding mentioning ETH/cryptocurrency things because you're unlikely to integrate them, or because it's not super popular to talk about that right now?

[Piero0909]

Great point! We believe there is a lot of potential on many other technologies like ETH/Crypto. We just had to start with basics and continue to evolve from there

[solarkraft]

I'm genuinely confused why you think crypto currency has anything to offer for traditional banking

[el-salvador]

> But currently Latinos mostly use Whatsapp for payments? Is that right?

WhatsApp is widely used for almost everything in Latin America. But it doesn't support native in app payments yet.

They tried to do that in Brazil in 2020 but they were slowed down or halted for regulatory concerns.

Something we do very often is to share online payment links and bank transfer screenshots via WhatsApp.

[thankful69]

Zelle in the US is the most common form of instant payment, at least in South Florida.

[millzlane]

It's becoming better. But my companies credit union doesn't have Zelle yet. While my state employee credit union does.