Stablecoin News: USDT Spending Goes Mainstream With Opera MiniPay's LatAm Integration

Opera's MiniPay, a stablecoin wallet on the Celo blockchain, has launched "Pay like a local" in Argentina and Brazil, enabling its over 10 million users to spend dollar-denominated USDT directly at merchants. This integration connects USDT balances to PIX in Brazil and Mercado Pago in Argentina, facilitating instant conversion to local currency upon scanning QR codes. The infrastructure provider, Noah, handles the conversion so merchants receive local currency (pesos or reais) without handling crypto directly. This move, announced at Ethereum Devconnect, emphasizes real-world utility for crypto, leveraging the high adoption rates of PIX (over 76% of the Brazilian population) and Mercado Pago (nearly 70% of the Argentine market). MiniPay plans to expand this feature to other markets and is partnering with El Dorado, AlfredPay, and Paytrie for on- and off-ramps across Latin America and Canada.

(Source：CoinDesk)